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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Grey Lady, by Henry Seton Merriman
+(#3 in our series by Henry Seton Merriman)
+
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+Title: The Grey Lady
+
+Author: Henry Seton Merriman
+
+Release Date: September, 2004  [EBook #6517]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 25, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE GREY LADY ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREY LADY
+BY HENRY SETON MERRIMAN.
+
+
+
+
+     "The dog that snapt the shadow, dropt the bone."
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+BOOK THE FIRST
+
+I.       TWO IN THE FIELD.
+II.      A MAN DOWN.
+III.     A SEA DOG.
+IV.      PURGATORIO.
+V.       THE VALLEY OF REPOSE.
+VI.      AN ACTOR PASSES OFF THE STAGE.
+VII.     IN THE STREET OF THE PEACE.
+VIII.    THE DEAL.
+IX.      CUT FOR PARTNERS.
+X.       THE GAME OPENS.
+XI.      SHIPS UPON THE SEA.
+XII.     A SHUFFLE.
+XIII.    A CHOICE.
+XIV.     A QUATRE.
+XV.      DON QUIXOTE.
+XVI.     BROKEN.
+
+
+BOOK THE SECOND
+
+I.       BITS OF LIFE.
+II.      A COMPACT.
+III.     BAFFLED.
+IV.      FOR THE HIGHEST BIDDER.
+V.       THE TEAR ON THE SWORD.
+VI.      THE COUNT STANDS BY.
+VII.     A VOYAGE.
+VIII.    A GREAT FIGHT.
+IX.      THE EDITOR'S ROOM.
+X.       THE CURTAIN LOWERS.
+XI.      "MILKSOP".
+XII.     THE END OF THE "CROONAH."
+XIII.    AT D'ERRAHA AGAIN.
+XIV.     THE COUNT'S STORY.
+
+
+
+BOOK THE FIRST.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.   TWO IN THE FIELD.
+
+     Qui n'accepte pas le regret n'accepte pas la vie.
+
+The train technically known as the "Flying Dutchman," tearing
+through the plains of Taunton, and in a first-class carriage by
+themselves, facing each other, two boys.
+
+One of these boys remembers the moment to this day.  A journey
+accomplished with Care for a travelling companion usually adheres to
+the wheels of memory until those wheels are still.  Grim Care was
+with these boys in the railway carriage.  A great catastrophe had
+come to them.  A FitzHenry had failed to pass into her Majesty's
+Navy.  Back and back through the generations--back to the days when
+England had no navy--she had always been served at sea by a
+FitzHenry.  Moreover, there had always been a Henry of that name on
+the books.  Henry, the son of Henry, had, as a matter of course,
+gone down to the sea in a ship, had done his country's business in
+the great waters.
+
+There was, if they could have looked at it from a racial point of
+view, one small grain of consolation.  The record was not even now
+snapped--for Henry had succeeded, Luke it was who had failed.
+
+Henry sat with his back to the engine, looking out over the flat
+meadow-land, with some moisture remarkably like a tear in either
+eye.  The eyes were blue, deep, and dark like the eastern horizon
+when the sun is setting over the sea.  The face was brown, and oval,
+and still.  It looked like a face that belonged to a race, something
+that had been handed down with the inherent love of blue water.  It
+is probable that many centuries ago, a man with features such as
+these, with eyes such as these, and crisp, closely curling hair, had
+leaped ashore from his open Viking boat, shouting defiance to the
+Briton.
+
+This son of countless Henrys sat and thought the world was hollow,
+with no joy in it, and no hope, because Luke had failed.
+
+We are told that there shall be two in the field, that the one shall
+be taken and the other left.  But we have yet to learn why, in our
+limited vision, the choice seems invariably to be mistaken.  We have
+yet to learn why he who is doing good work is called from the field,
+leaving there the man whose tastes are urban.
+
+Except for the sake of the record--and we cannot really be expected
+in these busy times to live for generations past or yet unborn--
+except for the record it would have been more expedient that Henry
+should fail and Luke succeed.  Everybody knew this.  It was the
+common talk on board the Britannia.  Even the examiners knew it.
+Luke himself was aware of it.  But there had always been a fatality
+about Luke.
+
+And now, when it was quite apparent that Luke was a sailor and
+nothing else, the Navy would have none of him.  Those who knew him--
+his kindly old captain and others--averred that, with a strict and
+unquestionable discipline, Luke FitzHenry could be made a first-
+class officer and a brilliant sailor.  No one quite understood him,
+not even his brother Henry, usually known as Fitz.  Fitz did not
+understand him now; he had not understood him since the fatal notice
+had been posted on the broad mainmast, of which some may wot.  He
+did not know what to say, so, like the wise old Duke, he said
+nothing.
+
+In the meantime the train raced on.  Every moment brought them
+nearer to London and to the Honourable Mrs. Harrington.
+
+Fitz seemed to be realising this, for he glanced uneasily at his
+brother, whose morose, sullen face was turned resolutely towards the
+window.
+
+"She'll be a fool," he said, "if she does not give you another
+chance."
+
+"I would not take it," answered Luke mechanically.
+
+He was darker than his brother, with a longer chin and a peculiar
+twist of the lips.  His eyes were lighter in colour, and rather too
+close together.  A keen observer would have put him down as a boy
+who in manhood might go wrong.  The strange thing was that no one
+could have hesitated for a moment in selecting Luke as the cleverer
+of the two.
+
+Fitz paused.  He was not so quick with his tongue as with his limbs.
+He knew his brother well enough to foresee the effect of failure.
+Luke FitzHenry was destined to be one of those unfortunate men who
+fail ungracefully.
+
+"Do not decide in too great a hurry," said Fitz at length, rather
+lamely.  "Don't be a fool!"
+
+"No, it has been decided for me by my beastly bad luck."
+
+"It WAS bad luck--deuced bad luck."
+
+They had bought a packet of cigarettes at Exeter, but that outward
+sign of manhood lay untouched on the seat beside Fitz.  It almost
+seemed as if manhood had come to them both in a more serious form
+than a swaggering indulgence in tobacco.
+
+The boys were obviously brothers, but not aggressively twins.  For
+Luke was darker than Fitz, and somewhat shorter in stature.
+
+It is probable that neither of them had ever seriously contemplated
+the possibility of failure for one and not for the other.  Neither
+had ever looked onward, as it were, into life to see himself there
+without the other.  The life that they both anticipated was that
+life on the ocean wave, of which home-keeping poets sing so
+eloquently; and it had always been vaguely taken for granted that no
+great difference in rank or success could sever them.  Fitz was too
+simple-minded, too honest to himself, to look for great honours in
+his country's service.  He mistrusted himself.  Luke mistrusted
+Providence.
+
+Such was the difference between these two boys--the thin end of a
+wedge of years which, spreading out in after days, turned each life
+into a path of its own, sending each man inexorably on his separate
+way.
+
+These two boys were almost alone in the world.  Their mother had
+died in giving them birth.  Their father, an old man when he
+married, reached his allotted span when his sons first donned Her
+Majesty's brass buttons, and quietly went to keep his watch below.
+Discipline had been his guiding star through life, and when Death
+called him he obeyed without a murmur, trusting confidently to the
+Naval Department in the first place, and the good God in the second,
+to look after his boys.
+
+That the late Admiral FitzHenry had sorely misplaced his confidence
+in the first instance was a fact which the two boys were now called
+upon to face alone in their youthful ignorance of the world.  Fitz
+was uneasily conscious of a feeling of helplessness, as if some all-
+powerful protector had suddenly been withdrawn.  Their two lives had
+been pre-committed to the parental care of their country, and now it
+almost took their breath away to realise that Luke had no such
+protector.
+
+His was the pride that depreciates self.  During the last twenty-
+four hours Fitz had heard him boast of his failure, holding it up
+with a singularly triumphant sneer, as if he had always distrusted
+his destiny and took a certain pleasure in verifying his own
+prognostications.  There are some men who find a satisfaction in bad
+luck which good fortune could never afford them.
+
+In a large house in Grosvenor Gardens two ladies were at that same
+moment speaking of the FitzHenrys.  It was quite easy to see that
+the smaller lady of the two was the mistress of the house, as also
+of that vague abstract called the situation.  She sat in the most
+comfortable chair, which was, by the way, considerably too spacious
+for her, and there was a certain aggressive sense of possession
+about her attitude and manner.
+
+Had she been a man, one would have said at once that here was a
+nouveau riche, ever heedful of the fact that the big room and all
+the appurtenances thereof were the fruits of toil and perseverance.
+There was a distinct suggestion of self-manufacture about Mrs.
+Harrington--distinct, that is to say, to the more subtle-minded.
+For she was not vulgar, neither did she boast.  But the expression
+of her keen and somewhat worldly countenance betokened the intention
+of holding her own.
+
+The Honourable Mrs. Harrington was not only beautifully dressed, but
+knew how to wear her clothes en grande dame.
+
+"Yes," she was saying, "Luke has failed to pass off the Britannia.
+It is a rare occurrence.  I suppose the boy is a fool."
+
+Mrs. Harrington was rather addicted to the practice of calling other
+people names.  If the butler made a mistake she dubbed him an idiot
+at once.  She did not actually call her present companion, Mrs.
+Ingham-Baker, a fool, possibly because she considered the fact too
+apparent to require note.
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker, stout and cringing, smoothed out the piece of
+silken needlework with which she moved through life, and glanced at
+her companion.  She wanted to say the right thing.  And Mrs.
+Harrington was what the French call "difficult."  One could never
+tell what the right thing might be.  The art of saying it is,
+moreover, like an ear for music, it is not to be acquired.  And Mrs.
+Ingham-Baker had not been gifted thus.
+
+"And yet," she said, "their father was a clever man--as I have been
+told."
+
+"By whom?" inquired Mrs. Harrington blandly.
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker paused in distress.
+
+"I wonder who it was," she pretended to reflect.
+
+"So do I," snapped Mrs. Harrington.
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker's imagination was a somewhat ponderous affair,
+and, when she trusted to it, it usually ran her violently down a
+steep place.  She concluded to say nothing more about the late
+Admiral FitzHenry.
+
+"The boy," said Mrs. Harrington, returning to the hapless Luke, "has
+had every advantage.  I suppose he will try to explain matters when
+he comes.  I could explain it in one word--stupidity."
+
+"Perhaps," put in Mrs. Ingham-Baker nervously, "the brains have all
+gone to the other brother, Henry.  It is sometimes so with twins."
+
+Mrs. Harrington laughed rather derisively.
+
+"Stupid woman to have twins," she muttered.
+
+This was apparently one of several grievances against the late Mrs.
+FitzHenry.
+
+"They have a little money of their own, have they not?" inquired
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker, with the soft blandness of one for whom money has
+absolutely no attraction.
+
+"About enough to pay their washerwoman."
+
+There was a pause, and then Mrs. Ingham-Baker heaved a little sigh.
+
+"I am sure, dear," she said, "that in some way you will be rewarded
+for your great kindness to these poor orphan boys."
+
+She shook her head wisely, as if reflecting over the numerous cases
+of rewarded virtue which had come under her notice, and the action
+made two jet ornaments in her cap wobble, in a ludicrous manner,
+from side to side.
+
+"That may be," admitted the lady of the house, "though I wish I felt
+as sure about it as you do."
+
+"But then," continued Mrs. Ingham-Baker, in a low and feeling tone,
+"you always were the soul of generosity."
+
+The "soul of generosity" gave an exceedingly wise little smile--
+almost as if she knew better--and looked up sharply towards the
+door.  At the same moment the butler appeared.
+
+"Mr. Pawson, ma'am," he said.
+
+The little nod with which this information was received seemed to
+indicate that Mr. Pawson had been expected.
+
+Beneath her black curls Mrs. Ingham-Baker's beady eyes were very
+much on the alert.
+
+"In the library, James," said Mrs. Harrington--and the two jet
+ornaments bending over the silken needlework gave a little throb of
+disappointment.
+
+"Mr. Pawson," announced the lady of the house, "is the legal light
+who casts a shadow of obscurity over my affairs."
+
+And with that she left the room.
+
+As soon as the door was closed Mrs. Ingham-Baker was on her feet.
+She crossed the room to where her hostess's key-basket and other
+belongings stood upon a table near the window.  She stood looking
+eagerly at these without touching them.  She even stooped down to
+examine the address of an envelope.
+
+"Mr. Pawson!" she said, in a breathless whisper.  "Mr.  Pawson--what
+does that mean?  Can she be going to alter her--no!  But--yes, it
+may be!  Perhaps Susan knows."
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker then rang the bell twice, and resumed her seat.
+
+Presently an aged servant came into the room.  It was easy to see at
+a glance that she was a very old woman, but the years seemed to
+weigh less on her mind than on her body.
+
+"Yes," she said composedly.
+
+"Oh--eh, Susan," began Mrs. Ingham-Baker almost cringingly.  "I rang
+because I wanted to know if a parcel has come for me--a parcel of
+floss-silk--from that shop in Buckingham Palace Road, you know."
+
+"If it had come," replied Susan, with withering composure, "it would
+have been sent up to you."
+
+"Yes, yes, of course I know that, Susan.  But I thought that perhaps
+it might have been insufficiently addressed or something--that you
+or Mary might have thought that it was for Mrs. Harrington."
+
+"She don't use floss silks," replied the imperturbable Susan.
+
+"I was just going to ask her about it, when she was called away by
+some one.  I think she said that it was her lawyer."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Pawson."
+
+Susan's manner implied--very subtly and gently--that her place in
+this pleasant house was more assured than that of Mrs. Ingham-Baker,
+and perhaps that stout diplomatist awoke to this implication, for
+she pulled herself up with considerable dignity.
+
+"I hope that nothing is wrong," she said, in a tone that was
+intended to disclaim all intention of discussing such matters with a
+menial.  "I should be sorry if Mrs. Harrington was drawn into any
+legal difficulty; the law is so complicated."
+
+Susan was engaged in looking for a speck of dust on the mantelpiece,
+not for its own intrinsic value, but for the sake of Mary's future.
+She had apparently no observation of value to offer upon the vexed
+subject of the law.
+
+"I was rather afraid," pursued Mrs. Ingham-Baker gravely, "that Mrs.
+Harrington might be unduly incensed against that poor boy, Luke
+FitzHenry; that in a moment of disappointment, you know, she might
+be making some--well, some alteration in her will to the detriment
+of the boy."
+
+Susan stood for a moment in front of the lady, with a strange little
+smile of amusement among the wrinkles of her face.
+
+"Yes, that may be," she said, and quietly left the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.  A MAN DOWN.
+
+     Caress the favourites, avoid the unfortunate, and trust nobody.
+
+The atmosphere of Mrs. Harrington's drawing-room seemed to absorb
+the new-found manhood of the two boys, for they came forward shyly,
+overawed by the consciousness of their own boots, by the conviction
+that they carried with them the odour of cigarette smoke and
+failure.
+
+"Well, my dears," said the Honourable Mrs. Harrington, suddenly
+softened despite herself by the sight of their brown young faces.
+"Well, come here and kiss me."
+
+All the while she was vaguely conscious that she was surprising
+herself and others.  She had not intended to treat them thus.  Mrs.
+Harrington was a woman who had a theory of life--not a theory to
+talk about, but to act upon.  Her theory was that "heart" is all
+nonsense.  She looked upon existence here below as a series of
+contracts entered into with one's neighbour for purposes of mutual
+enjoyment or advantage.  She thought that life could be put down in
+black and white.  Which was a mistake.  She had gone through fifty
+years of it without discovering that for the sake of some memory--
+possibly a girlish one--hidden away behind her cold grey eyes, she
+could never be sure of herself in dealing with man or boy whose
+being bore the impress of the sea.
+
+The strange thing was that she had never found it out.  We speak
+pityingly of animals that do not know their own strength.  Which of
+us knows his own weakness?  There was a man connected with Mrs.
+Harrington's life, one of the contractors in black and white, who
+had found out this effect of a brown face and a blue coat upon a
+woman otherwise immovable.  This man, Cipriani de Lloseta, who
+contemplated life, as it were, from a quiet corner of the dress
+circle, kept his knowledge for his own use.
+
+Fitz and Luke obeyed her invitation without much enthusiasm.  They
+were boyish enough to object to kissing on principle.  They then
+shook hands awkwardly with Mrs. Ingham-Baker, and drifted together
+again with that vague physical attraction which seems to qualify
+twins for double harness on the road of life.  There was trouble
+ahead of them; and without defining the situation, like soldiers
+surprised, they instinctively touched shoulders.
+
+It was the psychological moment.  There was a little pause, during
+which Mrs. Harrington seemed to stiffen herself, morally and
+physically.  Had she not stiffened herself, had she only allowed
+herself, as it were, to go--to call Luke to her and comfort him and
+sympathise with him--it would have altered every life in that room,
+and others outside of it.  Even blundering, cringing, foolish Mrs.
+Ingham-Baker would have acted more wisely, for she would have
+followed the dictates of an exceedingly soft, if shallow, heart.
+
+"I had hoped for a more satisfactory home-coming than this," said
+Mrs. Harrington in her hardest voice.  When she spoke in this tone
+there was the faintest suggestion of a London accent.
+
+Fitz made a little movement, a step forward, as if she had been
+unconsciously approaching the brink of some danger, and he wished to
+warn her.  The peculiar twist in Luke's lips became momentarily more
+visible, and he kept his deep, despondent eyes fixed on the
+speaker's face.
+
+There are two kinds of rich women.  The one spends her money in
+doing good, the other pays it away to gratify her love of power.  Of
+the Honourable Mrs. Harrington it was never reported that she was
+lavish in her charities.
+
+"I think," she said, "that I ought to tell you that I have been
+paying the expenses of your education almost entirely.  I was in no
+way bound to do so.  I took charge of you at your father's death
+because I--because he was a true friend to me.  I do not grudge the
+money, but in return I expected you to work hard and get on in your
+profession."
+
+She stiffened herself with a rustling sound of silk, proudly
+conscious of injured virtue, full of the charity that exacteth a
+high interest.
+
+"We did our best," replied Fitz, with a simple intrepidity which
+rather spoilt the awesomeness of the situation.
+
+"I am not speaking to you," returned the lady.  "You have worked and
+have passed your examination satisfactorily.  You are not clever--I
+know that; but you have managed to get into the Navy, where your
+father was before you, and your grandfather before him.  I have no
+doubt you will give satisfaction to your superior officers.  I was
+talking to Luke."
+
+"We all knew that," said Luke, in a dangerous voice, which trite
+observation she chose to ignore.
+
+"You have had equal advantages," pursued the dispenser of charity.
+"I have shown no favour; I have treated you alike.  It had been my
+intention to do so all your lives and after my death."
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker was so interested at this juncture that she leant
+forward with parted lips, listening eagerly.  The Honourable Mrs.
+Harrington allowed herself the plebeian pleasure of returning the
+stare with a questioning glance which broke off into a little laugh.
+
+"Have you," she continued, addressing Luke directly, "any reason to
+offer for your failure--beyond the usual one of bad luck?"
+
+Luke looked at her in a lowering way and made no reply.  Had Mrs.
+Harrington been a poor woman, she would have recognised that the boy
+was at the end of his tether.  But she had always been surrounded--
+as such women are--by men, and more especially by women, who would
+swallow any insult, any insolence, so long as it was gilded.  The
+world had, in fact, accepted the Honourable Mrs. Harrington because
+she could afford to gild herself.
+
+"It was bad luck, and nothing else," burst out Fitz, heedless of her
+sarcastic tones.  "Luke is a better sailor than I am.  But he always
+was weak in his astronomy, and it all turned on astronomy."
+
+"I should imagine it all turned on stupidity," said Mrs. Harrington.
+
+"I'm stupid, if you like," said Fitz; "Luke isn't.  Luke is clever;
+ask any chap on board!"
+
+"I do not need to ask any chap on board," said Mrs. Harrington.  "My
+own common sense tells me that he is clever.  He has proved it."
+
+"It's like a woman--to hit a fellow when he's down," said Luke, with
+his hands deep in his pockets.
+
+He turned to Mrs. Ingham-Baker for sympathy in this sentiment, and
+that soft-hearted lady deemed it expedient to turn hastily away,
+avoiding his glance, denying all partisanship.
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker was not a person given to the disguise of her own
+feelings.  She was plausible enough to the outer world.  To herself
+she was quite frank, and hardly seemed to recognise this as the
+event she had most desired.  It is to be presumed that her heart was
+like her physical self, a large, unwieldy thing, over which she had
+not a proper control.  The organ mentioned had a way of tripping her
+up.  It tripped her now, and she quite forgot that this quarrel was
+precisely what she had wanted for years.  She had looked forward to
+it as the turning-point in her daughter Agatha's fortunes.
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker had, in fact, wondered more than a thousand times
+why the Honourable Mrs. Harrington should do all for the FitzHenrys
+and nothing for Agatha.  She did not attempt to attribute reasons.
+She knew her sex too well for that.  She merely wondered, which
+means that she cherished a question until it grew into a grievance.
+The end of it she knew would be a quarrel.  This might not come
+until the FitzHenrys should have grown to man's estate and man's
+privilege of quarrelling with his female relatives about the
+youthful female relative of some other person.  But it would come,
+surely.  Mrs. Ingham-Baker, the parasite, knew her victim, Mrs.
+Harrington, well enough to be sure of that.
+
+And now that this quarrel had arisen--much sooner than she could
+have hoped--providentially brought about by an astronomical
+examination-paper, Mrs. Ingham-Baker was forced to face the
+humiliating fact that she felt sorry for Luke.
+
+It would have been different had Agatha been present, but that
+ingenious maiden was at school at Brighton.  Had her daughter been
+in the room, Mrs. Ingham-Baker's motherly instinct would have
+narrowed itself down to her.  But in the absence of her own child,
+Luke's sorry plight appealed to that larger maternal instinct which
+makes good women in unlikely places.
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker was, however, one of the many who learn to curb
+the impulse of a charitable intention.  She looked out of the
+window, and pretended not to notice that the culprit had addressed
+his remark to her.  To complete this convenient deafness she gave a
+simulated little cough of abstraction, which entirely gave her away.
+
+Mrs. Harrington chose to ignore Luke's taunt.
+
+"And," she inquired sweetly, "what do you intend to do now?"
+
+Quite suddenly the boy turned on her.
+
+"I intend," he cried, "to make my own life--whatever it may be.  If
+I am starving I will not come to you.  If half-a-crown would save
+me, I would rather die than borrow it from you.  You think that you
+can buy everything with your cursed money.  You can't buy me.  You
+can't buy a FitzHenry.  You--you can't--"
+
+He gave a little sob, remembered his new manhood--that sudden,
+complete manhood which comes of sorrow--pulled himself up, and
+walked to the door.  He opened it, turned once and glanced at his
+brother, and passed out of the room.
+
+So Luke FitzHenry passed out into his life--a life which he was to
+make for himself.  Passionate--quick to love, to hate, to suffer;
+deep in his feeling, susceptible to ridicule or sarcasm--an orphan.
+The stairs were dark as he went down them.
+
+Mrs. Harrington gave a little laugh as the door closed behind him.
+She had always been able to repurchase the friendship of her
+friends.
+
+Fitz made a few steps towards the door before her voice arrested
+him.  "Stop!" she cried.
+
+He paused, and the old sense of discipline that was in his blood
+made him obey.  He thought that he would find Luke upstairs on the
+bed with his face buried in his folded arms, as he had found him a
+score of times during their short life.
+
+"I think you are too hard on him," he answered hotly.  "It is bad
+enough being ploughed, without having to stand abuse afterwards."
+
+"My dear," said Mrs. Harrington, "just you come here and sit beside
+me.  We will leave Luke to himself for a little.  It is much better.
+Let him think it out alone."
+
+What was there in this fair-haired boy's demeanour, voice, or being
+that appealed to Mrs. Harrington, despite her sterner self?
+
+So Fitz was pacified by the lady's gentler manner, and consented to
+remain.  He made good use of his time, pleading Luke's cause,
+explaining his bad fortune, and modestly disclaiming any credit to
+himself for having succeeded where his brother failed.  But all the
+while the boy was restless, eager to get away and run upstairs to
+Luke, who he felt sure was living years in every moment, as children
+do in those griefs which we take upon ourselves to call childish.
+
+At last he rose.
+
+"May I go now?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, if you like.  But do not bring Luke to me until he is prepared
+to apologise for his ingratitude and rudeness."
+
+"What a dear boy he is!" ejaculated Mrs. Ingham-Baker almost before
+the door was closed.  "So upright and honest and straightforward."
+
+"Yes," answered Mrs. Harrington, with a sigh of anger.
+
+"He will be a fine man," continued Mrs. Ingham-Baker.  "I shall die
+quite happy if my Agatha marries such a man as Henry will be."
+
+Mrs. Harrington glanced at her voluminous friend rather critically.
+
+"You do not look like dying yet," she said.
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker put her head on one side and looked resigned.
+
+"One never knows," she answered.  "It is a great responsibility,
+Marian, to have a daughter."
+
+"I should imagine, from what I have seen of Agatha, that the child
+is quite capable of taking care of herself."
+
+"Yes," answered the fond mother, "she is intelligent.  But a girl is
+so helpless in the world, and when I am gone I should feel happier
+if I knew that my child had a good husband, such as Fitz, to take
+care of her."
+
+Neither of these ladies being of the modern school of feminine
+learning, the vague theology underlying this remark was allowed to
+pass unnoticed.
+
+Mrs. Harrington drummed with her thin wrinkled fingers on the arm of
+her chair, and waited with a queer anticipatory little smile for her
+friend to proceed.
+
+"But, of course," continued Mrs. Ingham-Baker, blundering into the
+little feminine snare, "a naval man can scarcely marry.  They are
+always so badly off.  I suppose poor Fitz will not be able to
+support a wife until he is quite middle-aged."
+
+"That remains to be seen," said Mrs. Harrington, with a gleam in her
+hard grey eyes, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker pricked her finger.
+
+"I am sure," said the latter lady unctuously, when she had had time
+to think it out, "I am sure I should be content for her to live very
+quietly if I only knew that she had married a good man.  I always
+say that riches do not make happiness."
+
+"Yes, a number of people say that," answered Mrs. Harrington, and at
+the same moment Fitz burst into the room.
+
+"Aunt Marian," he cried, "he has gone!"
+
+"Who has gone?" asked the lady of the house coldly.  "Please close
+the door."
+
+"Luke!  He has gone!  He went straight out of the house, and the
+butler does not know where he went to!  It is all your fault, Aunt
+Marian; you had no right to speak to him like that!  You know you
+hadn't.  I am going to look for him."
+
+"Now, do not get excited," said Mrs. Harrington soothingly.  "Just
+come here and listen to me.  Luke has behaved very badly.  He has
+been idle and stubborn on board the Britannia.  He has been rude and
+ungrateful to me."
+
+She found she had taken the boy's hand, and she dropped it suddenly,
+as if ashamed of showing so much emotion.
+
+"I am not going to have my house upset by the tantrums of a bad-
+tempered boy.  It is nearly dinner time.  Luke is sure to come back.
+If he is not back by the time we have finished dinner I will send
+one of the men out to look for him.  He is probably sulking in some
+corner of the gardens."
+
+Seeing that Fitz was white with anxiety, she forgot herself so much
+as to draw him to her again.
+
+"Now, Fitz," she said, "you must obey me and leave me to manage Luke
+in my own way.  I know best.  Just go and dress for dinner.  Luke
+will come back--never fear."
+
+But Luke did not come back.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.  A SEA DOG.
+
+     There is one that slippeth in his speech, but not from his
+heart.
+
+The glass door of the dining-room of the Hotel of the Four Nations
+at Barcelona was opened softly, almost nervously, by a shock-headed
+little man, who peered into the room.
+
+One of the waiters stepped forward and drew out a chair.
+
+"Thank ye--thank ye," said the new-comer, in a thick though pleasant
+voice.
+
+He looked around, rather bewildered--as if he had never seen a table
+d'hote before.  It almost appeared as if a doubt existed in his mind
+whether or not he was expected to go and shake hands with some one
+present, explaining who he was.
+
+As, however, no one appeared to invite this confidence he took the
+chair offered and sat gravely down.
+
+The waiter laid the menu at his side, and the elderly diner, whose
+face and person bespoke a seafaring life, gazed politely at it.  He
+was obviously desirous of avoiding hurting the young man's feelings,
+but the card puzzled as much as it distressed him.
+
+Observing with the brightest of blue eyes the manners and customs of
+his neighbours, the old sailor helped himself to a little wine from
+the decanter set in front of him, and filled up the glass with
+water.
+
+The waiter drew forward a small dish of olives and another
+containing slices of red sausage of the thickness, consistency, and
+flavour of a postage stamp.  The Englishman looked dubiously at
+these delicacies and shook his head--still obviously desirous of
+giving no offence.  Soup was more comprehensible, and the sailor
+consumed his portion with a non-committing countenance.  But the
+fish, which happened to be of a Mediterranean savour--served in
+little lumps--caused considerable hesitation.
+
+"Is it slugs?" inquired the mariner guardedly--as if open to
+conviction--in a voice that penetrated half the length of the table.
+
+The waiter explained in fluent Castilian the nature of the dish.
+
+"I want to know if it's slugs," repeated the sailor, with a stout
+simplicity.
+
+One or two commercial travellers, possessing a smattering of
+English, smiled openly, and an English gentleman seated at the side
+of the inquirer leant gravely towards him.
+
+"That is a preparation of fish," he explained.  "You won't find it
+at all bad."
+
+"Thank you, sir," replied the old man, helping himself with an air
+of relief which would have been extremely comic had it been shorn of
+its pathos.  "I am afraid," he went on confidentially, "of gettin'
+slugs to eat.  I'm told that they eat them in these parts."
+
+"This," replied the other, with stupendous gravity, "is not the slug
+season.  Besides, if you did get 'em, I dare say you would be
+pleasantly surprised."
+
+"Maybe, maybe!  Though I don't hold by foreign ways."
+
+Such was the beginning of a passing friendship between two men who
+had nothing in common except their country; for one was a peer of
+the realm, travelling in Spain for the transaction of his own
+private affairs, or possibly for the edification of his own private
+mind, and the other was Captain John Thomas Bontnor, late of the
+British mercantile service.
+
+Being a simple-minded person, as many seamen are, Captain Bontnor
+sought to make himself agreeable.
+
+"This is the first time," he said, "that I have set foot in Spain,
+though I've heard the language spoken, having sailed in the Spanish
+Main, and down to Manilla one voyage likewise.  It is a strange-
+sounding language, I take it--a lot of jabbering and not much
+sense."
+
+He spoke somewhat slowly, after the manner of one who had always had
+a silent tongue until grey hairs came to mellow it.
+
+The young man, his hearer, looked slightly distressed, as if he was
+suppressing some emotion.  He was rather a vacuous-looking young
+man--startlingly clean as to countenance and linen.  He was shaven,
+and had he not been distinctly a gentleman, he might have been a
+groom.  He apparently had a habit of thrusting forward his chin for
+the purpose of scratching it pensively with his forefinger.  This
+elegant trick probably indicated bewilderment, or, at all events, a
+slight mystification--he had recourse to it now--on the question of
+the Spanish language.
+
+"Well," he answered gravely, "if you come to analyse it, I dare say
+there is as much sense in it as in other languages--when you know
+it, you know."
+
+"Yes," murmured the captain, with a glowing sense of satisfaction at
+his own conversational powers.  He felt he was becoming quite a
+society man.
+
+"But," pursued the hereditary legislator, "it's tricky--deuced
+tricky.  The nastiest lot of irregular verbs I've come across yet.
+Still, I get along all right.  Worst of it is, you know, that when
+I've got a sentence out all right with its verbs and things, I'm not
+in a fit state to catch the answer."
+
+"Knocks you on to your beam-ends," suggested Captain Bontnor.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Lord Seahampton settled his throat more comfortably in his spotless
+collar, and proceeded to help himself to a fourth mutton cutlet.
+
+"Staying here long?" he inquired.
+
+"No, not long," answered Captain Bontnor slowly, as if meditating;
+then suddenly he burst into his story.  "You see, sir," he said,
+"I'm getting on in years, and I'm not quite the build for foreign
+travel.  It sort of flurries me.  I'm a bit past it.  I'm not here
+for pleasure, you know."
+
+This seemed to have the effect of sending Lord Seahampton off into a
+brown study--not apparently of great value so far as depth of
+thought was concerned.  He looked as if he were wondering whether he
+himself was in Barcelona for pleasure or not.
+
+"No," he murmured encouragingly,
+
+"It is like this," pursued Captain Bontnor, confidentially.  "My
+sister, Amelia Ann, married above her."
+
+"Very much to her credit," said Lord Seahampton, with a stolid face
+and a twinkle in his eye.  "And--"
+
+"Died."
+
+"Dear, dear!"
+
+"Yes," pursued the captain, "she died nineteen years ago, leaving a
+little girl.  He's dead now--Mr. Challoner.  He's my brother-in-law,
+but I call him Mr. Challoner, because he's above me."
+
+"I trust he is," said Lord Seahampton, cheerfully, with a glance at
+the painted ceiling.  "I trust he is."
+
+The captain chuckled.  "I mean in a social way," he explained.  "And
+now he's dead, his daughter Eve is left quite alone in the world,
+and she telegraphed for me.  She is living in the Island of
+Majorca."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+The kindly old blue eyes flashed round on his companion's face.
+
+"Do you know it?"
+
+The peer thrust forward his chin and spoilt what small claims he had
+to good looks.
+
+"No; I've heard of it, though.  I know of a wom--a lady, who has
+large estates there--a Mrs. Harrington."
+
+"The Honourable Mrs. Harrington is a sort of relation of my niece's,
+Miss Challoner.  I call her Miss Challoner, although she is my
+niece, because she is above me."
+
+His lordship glanced at the ceiling again.
+
+"I mean she is a lady.  And I'm going to Majorca to fetch her.  At
+least, I'm trying to get there, but I cannot somehow find out about
+the boat.  They're a bit irregular, it seems, and this stupid
+jabbering of theirs does flurry me so.  Now, what's this?   Eh?
+Pudding, is it?  Well, it doesn't look like it.  No, thank ye!"
+
+The poor old man was soon upset by insignificant trifles, and after
+he had given way to a little burst of petulance like this, he had a
+strange, half pathetic way of staring straight in front of him for a
+few seconds, as if collecting himself again.
+
+It happened that Lord Seahampton was a good-natured young man, with
+rather a soft heart, such as many horsey persons possess.  Something
+in Captain Bontnor touched him; some simple British quality which he
+was pleased to meet with, thus, in a foreign land.
+
+"Look here," he said, "I'll go out with you afterwards and find out
+all about the boat, take your ticket, and fix the whole thing up."
+
+"I'm sure you're very kind," began the old sailor hesitatingly.  He
+fumbled at his necktie for a moment with unsteady, weather-beaten
+hands.  "But I shouldn't like to trespass on your time.  I take it
+you're here for pleasure?"
+
+Lord Seahampton smiled.
+
+"Yes, I'm here for pleasure; that's what I'm in the world for."
+
+Still Captain Bontnor hesitated.
+
+"You might meet some of your friends," he began tentatively, "in the
+streets, you know."  He paused and looked down at his own hands; he
+turned one palm up, showing the faint tattoo on the wrist.  "I'm
+only a rough seafaring man," he went on.  "They might think it
+strange--might wonder whom you had picked up."
+
+The spotless collar seemed to be very uncomfortable.
+
+"I've always made a practice," mumbled Lord Seahampton, rather
+incoherently, "of letting my friends think what they damned well
+please.  May I ask your name?"
+
+"Bontnor's my name.  Captain Bontnor, at your service."
+
+"My name's Seahampton."
+
+Captain Bontnor turned and looked at him.
+
+"Yes, I'm Lord Seahampton."
+
+"Oh!" ejaculated Captain Bontnor, under his breath.  His social
+facilities did not quite rise to an occasion like this.
+
+"As soon as you've finished," went on his companion rather
+hurriedly, "we'll go out and look up these steamer people.  Miss
+Challoner will be anxious for you to get there as soon as you can."
+
+"Yes, yes!"
+
+The captain laid aside his napkin and began to show signs of getting
+flurried again.
+
+"Her name is Eve," he said, in the hurried way which was rather
+pathetic.  "Now, I wonder what I should call her.  Poor young thing!
+if she's distressed about her father's death--which is only natural,
+I'm sure--it would sound a bit chilly like to call her Miss
+Challoner.  What do you think, Mr.--eh--er--Lord--sir?"
+
+"Well, I think I should call her Eve--it's a pretty name--and take
+her by the hand, and--yes, I think I'd kiss her.  Especially if she
+was a nice-looking girl," he added for his own personal edification
+as he preceded his companion into the hall.
+
+He was fumbling in the tail pocket of his short tweed coat as he
+went.  In the hall he turned.
+
+"Got anything to smoke?" he asked, in his most abrupt manner, as if
+the cut of his collar did not allow of verbosity.
+
+The old man shyly produced some cigars in a leather case, which had
+never been of great value, even in the far-off days of its youth.
+
+"I hardly like to offer them to you," he said slowly.  "T--they're
+not expensive, and I couldn't explain to the young woman what I
+wanted."
+
+"Rather like the look of them," said Lord Seahampton, taking one and
+cutting the end off with a certain show of eagerness.  This young
+man's reputation for personal bravery was a known quantity on the
+hunting-field.  "Old sailors," he continued, "generally know good
+tobacco."
+
+And all the while he had half-a-dozen of the best Havanas in his
+pocket.  Some instinct, which he was much too practical to define,
+and possibly too stupid to detect, told him that this was one of
+those occasions where it is much more blessed to receive than to
+give.
+
+"And so," continued Captain Bontnor, as they were walking down the
+shady side of that noisiest street in the world, the Rambla, "and so
+you would just call her Eve, if you was me?"
+
+"I should."
+
+"Remember that she is a lady, you know.  Quite a lady."
+
+"I am remembering that," replied the peer stolidly; "that's why I am
+of the opinion just expressed."
+
+Captain Bontnor gave a little sigh of relief, as if one of his many
+difficulties had been removed.  At the same time he glanced
+furtively towards the inexpensive cigar, which was affording
+distinct if somewhat exaggerated enjoyment.
+
+Together they walked down the broad street and turned along the
+quay.  And here Captain Bontnor found himself talking quite easily
+and affably about palm-trees and tramways, and other matters of
+local interest, to the first peer whom he had ever seen in the
+flesh.
+
+Out of sheer good nature, and with a vague question in his mind as
+to whether Miss Challoner knew what sort of help she had called in,
+Lord Seahampton obtained the necessary information--no easy matter
+in this country--and took the necessary ticket.  Ticket and
+information alike were obtained from a grave gentleman who smoked a
+cigarette, and did the honours of his little office as if it had
+been a palace--showing no desire to sell the ticket, and taking
+payment as if he were conferring a distinct favour.
+
+The steamer left that same afternoon, and Lord Seahampton sent his
+protege back rejoicing to the hotel to pack up.  Then the youthful
+peer bestowed the remainder of the cheap cigar on an individual in
+reduced circumstances and lighted one of his own.  He was quite
+unconscious of having done a good action.  Such actions are supposed
+to bring their own reward, but experience suggests that it is best
+not to count upon anything of a tangible nature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.  PURGATORIO.
+
+     Like lutes of angels, touched so near
+     Hell's confines, that the damned can hear.
+
+Time:  Five o'clock in the afternoon.  Five o'clock, that is to say,
+by the railway time.  There is another time in Barcelona--the town
+time, to wit--which differs from the hour of the iron road by thirty
+minutes or thereabouts.  But then the town time is Spanish, that is
+to say that no one takes any notice of it.  For into Spanish life
+time comes but little.  If one wishes to catch a train--but, by the
+way, in Spain we do not catch, we take the train--a subtle
+difference--if then we wish to take the train, we arrive at the
+station three-quarters of an hour before the time indicated for
+departure, and there we make our arrangements with due dignity.
+
+Place:  The Rambla, which for those who speak alien tongues has an
+Arabic sound, and tells us that this, the finest promenade in the
+world, was once a sandy river-bed.  Here now the grave caballero
+promenades himself from early morning to an eve that knows no dew.
+
+Priest and peasant, the great lady and the gentleman who sells one a
+glass of water for a centimo, brush past each other.  The great lady
+is dressed in black, as all Spanish ladies are, and on her head she
+wears the long-lived mantilla, which will last our time and the time
+of our grandsons.  The humbler women-folk wear bright handkerchiefs
+in place of the mantilla; in dress they affect bright colours.
+
+With the sterner sex, the line of demarcation is equally distinct.
+There is the man who wears the peasant's blouse, and the man who
+wears the cloak.
+
+It is with one of the latter that we have to deal--a tall, grave
+man, with quiet eyes and a long, pointed chin.  The air is chilly,
+and this promenader's black cloak is thrown well over the shoulder,
+displaying the bright-coloured lining of velvet, which is all the
+relief the Spaniard allows his sombre self.
+
+The caballero's face is brown, as of one whose walk is not always
+beneath the shady trees.  The expression of it is chastened.  One
+sees the history of a country in the faces of its men.  In this
+there is the history of a past, it is the face of a man living in a
+bygone day.  He notes the interest of the moment with grave
+surprise, but his life is behind him.
+
+This man has the Spaniard's thoughtful interest in a trifle.  He
+pauses to note the number of the sparrows, as thick as leaves upon
+the trees.  He carefully unfolds his cloak, gives the loose end a
+little shake, and casts it skilfully over his shoulder, so that it
+falls across his back, and, hanging there, displays the bright
+lining.  He pauses to watch the result of an infantile accident.
+The baby picks itself up and brushes the dust from its diminutive
+frock with all the earnestness of early youth.  And the cavalier
+walks on.
+
+All this with a contemplative grandeur of demeanour worthy of larger
+if not better things.
+
+In the roadway at the side of the broad promenade a carriage and
+pair followed this gentleman--carriage and horses which were
+beautiful even in this land of horses.  For this was Cipriani de
+Lloseta de Mallorca, a great man in Barcelona, if he wished it, a
+greater in his own little island of Majorca, whether he wished it or
+not.
+
+Leading out of this same fascinating Rambla, to the left, up towards
+the impenetrable fortress of Juich--impenetrable excepting once, and
+then it was the pestilent Englishman, as usual--leading then to the
+left is the Calle de la Paz.  In the Street of the Peace there is a
+house, on the left hand also, into the door of which one could not
+only drive a coach and four, but eke a load of straw.  Moreover, the
+driver could go to sleep and leave it to the horses, for there is
+plenty of space.  This is the Casa Lloseta, the town residence since
+time immemorial of the family of that name.  There are servants at
+the door, there are servants on the broad marble staircase, there
+are servants everywhere! for the Spaniard is unapproachable in the
+gentle art of leaving things to others.  In the patio, or marble
+courtyard, there plays a monotonous little fountain, peacefully
+plashing away the sunny hours.
+
+In England el Senor Conde de Lloseta de Mallorca would be looked
+upon as a mystery, because he lived in a large house by himself;
+because it was not known what his tastes might be; because the
+interviewer interviewed him not, and because the Society rags had no
+opportunity of describing his drawing-room.
+
+In Spain things are different.  If the count chose to live in his
+own cellar, his neighbours would shrug their shoulders and throw the
+end of their capes well over to the back.  That was surely the
+business of the count.
+
+Moreover, Cipriani de Lloseta was not the sort of man of whom it is
+easy to ask questions.  His was the pride of pride, which is a vice
+unbreakable.  When the Moors went to Majorca in the eighth century
+they found Llosetas there, and Llosetas were left behind eight
+hundred years later, when the southern conqueror was driven back to
+his dark land.  Among his friends it is known that Cipriani de
+Lloseta lived alone because he was faithful to the memory of one
+who, but for the hand of God, would have lived with him until she
+was an old woman, filling, perhaps, the great gloomy house in the
+Calle de la Paz with the prattle of children's voices, with the
+clatter of childish feet in the marble passages.
+
+The younger women looked at him surreptitiously, and asked each
+other what sort of wife this must have been; while their elders
+shrugged their ample shoulders with a strange little Catalonian
+contraction of the eyes, and said -
+
+"It is not so much the woman herself as that which the man makes
+her."
+
+For they are wise, these stout and elderly ladies.  They were once
+young, and they learnt the lesson.
+
+This man, Cipriani de Lloseta, leads a somewhat lonely life,
+inasmuch as he associates but little with the men of his rank and
+station.  It is, for instance, known that he walks on the Rambla,
+but no one of any importance whatever, no one that is likely to
+recognise him, is aware of the fact that another favourite promenade
+of his is the Muelle de Ponente, that forsaken pier where the stone
+works are and where no one ever promenades.  Here Cipriani de
+Lloseta walks gravely in the evening--to be more precise, on Tuesday
+or Friday evening--about five o'clock, when the boat sails for
+Majorca.
+
+He stands, a lonely, cloaked figure, at the end of the long stone
+pier, and his dark Spanish eyes rest on the steamer as it glides
+away into the darkening east and south.
+
+Often, often this man watches the boats depart, but he never goes
+himself.  Often, often he gazes out in his chastened, impenetrable
+silence over the horizon, as if seeking to pierce the distance and
+look on the bare heights of the far-off island.
+
+For there, over the glassy smoothness of the horizon, behind those
+little grey clouds, is Majorca--and Lloseta.
+
+Lloseta, a bare, brown village, standing on the hillside, as if it
+had economically crept up there among the pines, so as to leave
+available for cultivation every inch of the wonderful soil of the
+plain.  Below, the vast fertile plateau, tilled like a garden, lies
+to the westward, while to the east the rising undulations terminate
+in the bare uplands of Inca.  Olive-trees cover the plain like an
+army, trees that were planted by the Moors a thousand years ago.
+
+Amid the rugged heights of the mountains, here at their highest, and
+in the fastness of a gorge, lies Lloseta itself.
+
+From the heights above a subtle invigorating odour of marjoram,
+rosemary, lavender, growing wild like heather, comes down to mingle
+with the more languid breath of tropic plant and flower.
+
+Such is Lloseta--a home to live for, to die for, to dream of when
+away from it.  As a man is dreaming of it now, just across that
+hundred miles of smooth sea, on the end of the Muelle de Ponente at
+Barcelona,
+
+He is always dreaming of it--in Spain, where he is a Spaniard--in
+England, where he might be an Englishman.  It is not every one of us
+who has a home from whence his name is derived, who signs his
+letters with a word that is marked upon the map.
+
+Such is Cipriani of that name, who has now left the Rambla and is
+wandering along the deserted pier.
+
+The steamer has loosed its moorings, is slowly picking its way out
+of the crowded harbour, and it will pass the pier-head by the time
+that Cipriani de Lloseta reaches that point.
+
+The man walks slowly, cloaked to the mouth, for the evening breeze
+is chilly.  He gravely descends the steps and begins to walk on the
+little path around the circular tower at the end of the pier.  He
+usually stands at the very end, so as to be as near to Majorca as
+possible, one might almost think.
+
+He gravely walks on, and quite suddenly he comes upon a youthful
+Briton smoking a cigar and dangling a thick stick.
+
+"Ah!" the two men exclaim.
+
+"What are you doing in Barcelona?" asks the Spaniard.
+
+"The devil only knows, my dear man.  I don't."
+
+"I hope he had nothing to do with your coming here--idle hands, you
+know."
+
+The Englishman sat gravely down on a small granite column and
+reflected.
+
+"No," he answered after a pause, "it was not that.  I left England
+because I wanted to get away from--Well, from an old woman who wants
+me to marry her daughter.  I went to Monte Carlo, and, if you don't
+mind my saying so, I'm hanged if she didn't follow me, bringing the
+poor girl with her."
+
+The Spaniard smiled gravely.
+
+"A willing victim!"
+
+"No, Lloseta, you're wrong there.  That's the beastly part of it.
+That girl, sir, was actually shivering with fright one night when
+the old woman managed to leave us on the terrace together.  Some one
+else, you know!"
+
+The dark eyes looking across towards Majorca were not pleasant to
+contemplate.
+
+"However," pursued the ingenuous parti, "I spoke to her as one might
+have done to another chap, you know.  I said, 'You're frightened of
+something.'  She didn't answer.  'You're afraid that I'm going to
+ask you to marry me.'  'Yes,' she answered.  'Well, I'm not.  I'm
+not such a cad.'  And after that we got on all right.  She would
+have told who it was if I had let her.  Two days later I sloped off
+here.  Spain choked her off--the old lady, I mean."
+
+Lloseta laughed, and the young man began to think that he had said
+something rude.
+
+"She did not know what a nice place it is," he added, with a
+transparency which did no harm.  "Yes, you're right.  The devil had
+something to do with my coming here.  Match-making old women are the
+devil."
+
+He paused and attended to his cigar.  The steamer passed within a
+hundred yards of them.
+
+The Englishman nodded towards it.
+
+"Steamer's going to Majorca," he said.
+
+Lloseta nodded his head.
+
+"Yes," he answered gravely, "I know."
+
+"I came down to see it off!"
+
+The Spaniard looked at him sharply.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"I know an old chap on board--going across to fetch an English girl,
+a Miss Challoner.  Her father's dead."
+
+Lloseta said nothing.  Presently he turned to go, and as they walked
+back together he arranged to send a carriage for the Englishman and
+his luggage to bring him to the big house in the Street of the
+Peace, which he explained with a shadowy smile was more comfortable
+than the hotel.
+
+"So," he said to himself, as he walked towards his vast home alone,
+"so the Caballero Challoner is dead.  They are passing off the stage
+one by one."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.  THE VALLEY OF REPOSE.
+
+     A home where exiled angels might forbear
+     Awhile to moan for paradise.
+
+There is a valley far up in the mountains behind the ancient city of
+Palma--the Val d'Erraha.  Some thousand years ago the Arabs found
+this place.  After toils and labours, and many battles by sea and
+land, a roaming sheikh settled here, calling it El Rahah--the
+Repose.
+
+He dug a well--for where the Moor has been there is always sparkling
+water--he planted olive trees, and he built a mill.  The well is
+there to-day; the olive trees, old and huge and gnarled as are no
+other olive trees on the earth, yield their yearly crop unceasingly;
+the mill grinds the Spaniard's corn to-day.
+
+In the Val d'Erraha there stands a house--a rambling, ungainly Farm,
+as such are called in Majorca.  It runs off at strange angles,
+presenting a broken face to all points of the compass.  From a
+distance it rather resembles a village, for the belfry of the little
+chapel is visible and the buildings seem to be broken up and
+divided.  On closer inspection it is found to be self-contained, and
+a nearer approach discloses the fact that it presents to the world
+four solid walls, and that it is only to be entered by an arched
+gateway.
+
+In the centre of the open patio stands the Moorish well, surrounded,
+overhung by orange trees.  This house could resist a siege--indeed,
+it was built for that purpose; for the Moorish pirates made raids on
+the island almost within the memory of living persons.
+
+Such is the Casa d'Erraha--the House of Repose.  It stands with its
+back to the pine slopes, looking peacefully down the valley, over
+terraces where grow the orange, the almond, the fig, the lemon, the
+olive; and far below, where the water trickles, the feathery bamboo.
+
+The city of Palma is but a few miles away, in its strong thirteenth-
+century restriction within high ramparts.  It has its cathedral, its
+court-house--all the orthodox requirements of a city, and, moreover,
+it is the capital of the whilom kingdom of Majorca.  King Jaime is
+dead and gone.  Majorca, after many vicissitudes, has settled down
+into an obscure possession of Spain; and to the old-world ways of
+that country it has taken very kindly.
+
+But with the unwritten history of Majorca we have little to do, and
+we have much with the Casa d'Erraha and the owner thereof--a plain
+Englishman of the name of Challoner--the last of his line, the third
+of his race, to own the Casa d'Erraha.
+
+Edward Challoner lay on his bed in the large room overlooking the
+valley and the distant sea.  In the House of Repose he lay awaiting
+the call to a longer rest than earthly weariness can secure.  The
+grave old Padre of the neighbouring village of St. Pablo stood near
+the bed.  Eve Challoner had sent for him, with the instinct that
+makes us wish to be seen off on a long journey by a good man, of
+whatsoever creed or calling.
+
+At times the old priest gently patted the hand of Eve Challoner as
+she stood by his side.
+
+Climate and country and habit have a greater influence over the
+human frame than we ever realise.  Eve Challoner had been subject to
+these subtle influences to a rare extent.  Tall and upright, clad in
+black, as all Spanish ladies are, she was English and yet Spanish.
+Of a clear white, her skin was touched slightly by the sun and the
+warm air which blows ever from the sea, blow which way it may across
+the little island.
+
+Romance tells of Andalusian beauty, of Catalonian grace--and in
+sober British earnest (a solid thing) there are few more beautiful
+women than high-born Spanish ladies.  Eve Challoner had caught
+something--some trick of the head--which belongs to Spain alone.
+Her eyes had a certain northern vivacity of glance, a small
+something which is noticeable enough in Southern Europe, though we
+should hardly observe it in England, for it means education.  In the
+matter of learning, be it noted in passing, the ladies of the
+Peninsula are not so very far above their duskier sisters of the
+harem farther east.
+
+The girl's eyes were dull now, with a sort of surprised anguish, for
+sorrow had come to her before its time.  The man lying on the bed
+before her had not reached the limit of his years.  Quite suddenly,
+twelve hours before, he had complained of a numb feeling in his
+head, and the voice he spoke in was thick and strange.  In a
+surprisingly short time Edward Challoner was no longer himself--no
+longer the cynical, polished gentleman of the world--but a hard-
+breathing, inert deformity, hardly human.  From that time to this he
+had never spoken, and Heaven knew there was enough for him to say.
+Death had caught him unawares as, after all, he generally does catch
+us.  There were several things to set in order as usual; for it is
+only in books and on the stage that folks make a graceful exit,
+clearing up the little mystery, forgiving the wrongs, boasting with
+feeble voice of the good they have done--with lowering tone and soft
+music slowly working together to the prompter's bell.  It is not in
+real life that dying men find much time to prattle about their own
+souls.  They usually want all their breath for those they leave
+behind.  And who knows!  Perhaps those waiting on the other side
+think no worse of the man who dies fearing for others and not for
+himself.
+
+In Edward Challoner's paralysed brain there was a great wish to
+speak to his daughter, but the words would not come.  He looked at
+those around him with a dreary indistinctness as from a distance,
+almost as if he had begun his long journey and was looking back from
+afar.
+
+And so the afternoon wore on to the short southern twilight, and the
+goat-bells came tinkling up from the valley--for nature must have
+her way though men may die, and milking-time rules through all the
+changes.
+
+While the light failed over the land two men were riding through it
+as fast as horse could lay hoof to the ground.  They were on the
+small road running from the Soller highway up to the Val d'Erraha,
+and he who led the way seemed to know every inch of it.  This was
+Henry FitzHenry, and his companion, ill at ease in a Spanish saddle,
+was the doctor of Her Majesty's gunboat Kittiwake.
+
+Four months earlier, by one of those chances which seem no chance
+when we look back to them, the Kittiwake had broken down on leaving
+the anchorage of Port Mahon.  Towed back by a consort, she had been
+there ever since, awaiting some necessary pieces of machinery to be
+made in England and sent out to her.  Hearing by chance that the
+navigating lieutenant of the Kittiwake was Henry FitzHenry--usually
+known as Fitz--Mr. Challoner had written to Minorca from the larger
+island, introducing himself as the Honourable Mrs. Harrington's
+cousin, and offering what poor hospitality the Val d'Erraha had to
+dispense.
+
+In a little island there is not very much to talk about, and the
+gossips of Majorca had soon laid hold of Fitz.  They said that the
+English senorita up at the Casa d'Erraha had found a lover, and a
+fine, handsome one at that; else, they opined, why should this
+English sailor thrash his boat through any weather from Cuidadela in
+Minorca to Soller in Majorca, riding subsequently from that small
+and lovely town over the roughest country in the island to the
+Valley of Repose as if the devil were at his heels.  That was only
+their way of saying it, for they knew as well as any of us that love
+in front can make us move more quickly than ever the devil from
+behind.
+
+At Alcudia they watched his boat labour through the evil seas.  The
+wind was never too boisterous for him, the waves never too high.
+
+"It is," they said, "the English mariner from Mahon going to see the
+Senorita Challoner.  Ah! but he has a firm hand."
+
+And they smiled dreamily with their deep eyes, as knowing the malady
+themselves.
+
+This time there had been two figures clad in black oilskins in the
+stern of the long white boat.  Two horses had been ordered by cable
+to be ready at Soller instead of one.  For Eve Challoner had
+telegraphed to her countrymen at Port Mahon when this strange and
+horrid numbness seized her father.
+
+The sun was setting behind the distant line of the sea when Fitz and
+his companion urged their tired horses up the last slope to the Casa
+d'Erraha.  Within the gateway Mrs. Baines, the only English servant
+in this English house, was awaiting them.  She curtsied in an old-
+fashioned way to the doctor, who had not seen an Englishwoman's face
+for two years and more, and asked him to follow her.  Fitz did not
+offer to accompany them--indeed, he made it quite obvious that he
+did not want to do so.  Two of the vague attendants who are always
+to be found in their numbers about the doorway and stableyard of a
+Spanish country-house took the horses, and Fitz wandered round the
+patio to the southern door which led to the terrace.
+
+There was not very much change in Henry FitzHenry since we saw him
+in Mrs. Harrington's drawing-room six years earlier.  The promise of
+the boy had been fulfilled by the man, and here was a quiet
+Englishman, chiefly remarkable for a certain directness of purpose
+which was his, and seemed to pervade his being.  Here was one who
+had commanded men--who had directed skilled labour for the six
+impressionable years of his life.  And he who directs skilled labour
+is apt to differ in manner, in thought and habit, from him whose
+commands are obeyed mechanically.
+
+The naval officer is a man of detail--he tells others to do that
+which they know he can do better himself.
+
+They said on board the Kittiwake, which was a small ship, that
+Fitz,--"old" Fitz, they used to call him--was too big for a
+seafaring life.  In height, he was nearly six feet--six feet of
+spare muscle and bone--such a man as one sees on the north-east
+coast of England, the east coast of Scotland, or the west coast of
+Norway--anywhere, in fact, where the Vikings passed.
+
+The deep blue eyes had acquired a certain quiet which had been
+absent in the boyish face--the quiet that comes of a burden on the
+heart; of the certain knowledge that the burden can never be
+removed.  Luke's life was not the only one that had been spoiled by
+an examination paper.  Examination papers have spoilt more lives
+than they have benefited.  A twin brother is something more than a
+brother, and Fitz went through life as if one side of him was
+suffering a dull, aching pain.  The face of this man walking alone
+on the terrace of the House of Repose was not happy.  Perhaps it was
+too strong for complete happiness--some men are so, and others are
+too wise.  This was the face, not of a very wise or a brilliant man,
+but of one who was strong and simple--something in the nature of a
+granite rock.  Sandstone is more easily shaped into a thing of
+beauty, but it is also the sandstone that is worn by weather, while
+a deep mark cut on granite stays there till the end.
+
+Fitz had no intention of going upstairs.  He was not a man to take
+the initiative in social matters.  His instinct told him that if Eve
+wanted him she would send for him.  She had cabled to him to bring
+the doctor.  He had brought the doctor, and now he went out on the
+terrace to "stand by," as he put it to himself, for further orders.
+If, as the gossips averred, he was the Senorita's lover, he deemed
+it wiser to relinquish that position just now.
+
+As a matter of fact, however, no word of love had passed between
+them.
+
+Fitz was standing by the low wall of the terrace looking down into
+the hazy, dim depths of the valley, when the further orders which he
+awaited came to him.
+
+Hearing a light step on the pavement behind him, he turned, and
+faced Eve, who was running towards him.
+
+"Will you come upstairs?" she said.  "I think he wants to see you."
+
+"Certainly," he answered.
+
+She had hurried out, but they walked back rather slowly.
+Nevertheless, they did not seem to have anything to say to each
+other.
+
+When they entered the room upstairs together, a faint little smile
+full of wisdom hovered for a second round the old priest's clean-
+shaven lips.
+
+The dying man had evidently wanted something or some one.  The old
+priest knew human nature, hence the little shadowy smile called up
+by Eve's transparently partial interpretation of her father's
+desire.
+
+Edward Challoner looked at him, but did not appear to recognise his
+face.  It seemed that he had left the earth so far behind now that
+the faces of those walking on it were no longer distinguishable.
+
+He gave a little half-pettish groan, and a stillness came over the
+room.
+
+The old padre and the doctor, who did not know a word of any common
+language, exchanged a glance, and in a very business-like way, as of
+one whose trade it was, the priest got down upon his knees.  Then
+the doctor, half-shyly, approached Eve, and taking her by the arm,
+led her gently out of the room.
+
+Fitz stayed where he was, standing by the dead man, looking down at
+the priest's bowed head, while the bell of the little chapel
+attached to the Casa d'Erraha told the valley that a good man had
+gone to his rest.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.  AN ACTOR PASSES OFF THE STAGE.
+
+     We pass; the path that each man trod
+     Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds.
+
+The priest was the first to speak.
+
+"You are his friend, I also; but we are of different nations."
+
+He paused, drawing the sheet up over the dead man's face.
+
+"He was not of my Church.  You have your ways; will you make the
+arrangements?"
+
+"Yes," replied Fitz simply, "if you like."
+
+"It is better so, my son"--the padre took a pinch of snuff--
+"because--he was not of my Church.  You will stay here, you and your
+friend.  She, the Senorita Eve, cannot be left alone, with her
+grief."
+
+He spoke Spanish, knowing that the Englishman understood it.
+
+They drew down the blinds and passed out on to the terrace, where
+they walked slowly backwards and forwards, talking over the future
+of Eve and of the Casa d'Erraha.
+
+In Spain, as in other southern lands, they speed the parting guest.
+Two days later Edward Challoner was laid beside his father and
+grandfather in the little churchyard in the valley below the Casa
+d'Erraha.  And who are we that we should say that his chance of
+reaching heaven was diminished by the fact that part of the Roman
+Catholic burial service was read over him by a Spanish priest?
+
+Fitz had telegraphed to Eve's only living relative, Captain Bontnor,
+and Fitz it was who stayed on at the Casa d'Erraha until that
+mariner should arrive; for the doctor was compelled to return to his
+ship at Port Mahon, and the priest never slept in another but his
+own little vicarage house.
+
+And in the Casa d'Erraha was enacted at this time one of those
+strange little comedies that will force themselves upon a tragic
+stage.  Fitz deemed it correct that he should avoid Eve as much as
+possible, and Eve, on the other hand, feeling lonely and miserable,
+wanted the society of the simple-minded young sailor.
+
+"Why do you always avoid me?" she asked suddenly on the evening
+after the funeral.  He had gone out on to the terrace, and thither
+she followed him in innocent anger, without afterthought.  She stood
+before him with her slim white hands clasped together, resting
+against her black dress, a sombre, slight young figure in the
+moonlight, looking at him with reproachful eyes.
+
+He hesitated a second before answering her.  She was only nineteen;
+she had been born and brought up in the Valley of Repose amidst the
+simple islanders.  She knew nothing of the world and its ways.  And
+Fitz, with the burden of the unique situation suddenly thrust upon
+him, was, in his chivalrous youthfulness, intensely anxious to avoid
+giving her anything to look back to in after years when she should
+be a woman.  He was tenderly solicitous for the feelings which would
+come later, though they were absent now.
+
+"Because," he answered, "I am not good at saying things.  I don't
+know how to tell you how sorry I am for you."
+
+She turned away and looked across to the hills at the other side of
+the valley, a rugged outline against the sky.
+
+"But I know all that," she said softly, "without being told."
+
+A queer smile passed over his sunburnt face, as if she had
+unintentionally and innocently made things more difficult for him.
+
+"And," she continued, "it is--oh, so lonely."
+
+She made an almost imperceptible little movement towards him.  Like
+the child that she was, she was yearning for sympathy and comfort.
+"I know--I know," he said.
+
+Outward circumstance was rather against Fitz.  A clear, odorous
+Spanish night, the young moon rising behind the pines, a thousand
+dreamy tropic scents filling the air.  And Eve, half tearful, wholly
+lovable, standing before him, innocently treading on dangerous
+ground, guilelessly asking him to love her.
+
+She, having grown almost to womanhood, pure as the flowers of the
+field, ignorant, a child, knew nothing of what she was doing.  She
+merely gave way to the instinct that was growing within her--the
+instinct that made her turn to this man, claiming his strength, his
+tenderness, his capability, as given to him for her use and for her
+happiness.
+
+"You must not avoid me," she said.  "Why do you do it?  Have I done
+anything you dislike?  I have no one to speak to, no one who
+understands, but you.  There is the padre, of course--and nurse; but
+they do not understand.  They are--so OLD!  Let me stay here with
+you until it is time to go to bed, will you?"
+
+"Of course," he answered quietly.  "If you care to.  To-morrow I
+should think we shall hear from your uncle.  He may come by the boat
+sailing from Barcelona to-morrow night.  It will be a good thing if
+he does; you see, I must get back to my ship."
+
+"You said she would not be ready for sea till next month."
+
+"No, but there is discipline to be thought of."
+
+He looked past her, up to the stars, with a scrutinising maritime
+eye, recognising them and naming them to himself.  He did not meet
+her eyes--dangerous, tear-laden.
+
+"There is something the matter with you," she said.  "You are
+different.  Yes, you want my uncle to come the day after to-morrow--
+you want to go away to Mahon as soon as you can.  I--  Oh, Fitz, I
+don't want to be a coward!"
+
+She stood in front of him, clenching her little fists, forcing back
+the tears that gleamed in the moonlight.  He did not dare to cease
+his astronomical observations.
+
+"I WON'T be a coward--if you will only speak.  If you will tell me
+what it is."
+
+Then Fitz told his first deliberate lie.
+
+"I have had bad news," he said, "about my brother Luke.  I am
+awfully anxious about him."
+
+He did it very well; for his motive was good.  And we may take it
+that such a lie as this is not writ very large in the Book.
+
+The girl paused for a little, and then deliberately wiped the tears
+from her eyes.
+
+"How horribly selfish I have been!" she said.  "Why did you not tell
+me sooner?  I have only been thinking of my own troubles ever since-
+-ever since poor papa--  I am a selfish wretch!  I hate myself!
+Tell me about your brother."
+
+And so they walked slowly up and down the moss-grown terrace--alone
+in this wonderful tropic night--while he told her the little tragedy
+of his life.  He told the story simply, with characteristic gaps in
+the sequence, which she was left to fill up from her imagination.
+
+"I shall not like Mrs. Harrington," said Eve, when the story was
+told.  "I am glad that she cannot come much into my life.  My father
+wanted me to go and stay with her last summer, but I would not leave
+him alone, and for some reason he would not accept the invitation
+for himself.  Do you know, Fitz, I sometimes think there is a past--
+some mysterious past--which contained my father and Mrs. Harrington
+and a man--the Count de Lloseta."
+
+"I have seen him," put in Fitz, "at Mrs. Harrington's often."
+
+The girl nodded her head with a quaint little assumption of
+shrewdness and deep suspicion.
+
+"My father admired him--I do not know why.  And pitied him
+intensely--I do not know why."
+
+"He was always very nice to me," answered Fitz, "but I never
+understood him."
+
+Talking thus they forgot the flight of time.  It sometimes happens
+thus in youth.  And the huge clock in the stable yard striking ten
+aroused Eve suddenly to the lateness of the hour.
+
+"I must go," she said.  "I am glad you told me about--Luke.  I feel
+as if I knew you better and understood--a little more.  Good-night."
+
+She left him on the terrace, and walked sorrowfully away to the
+house which could never be the same again.
+
+Fitz watched her slight young form disappear through an open
+doorway, and then he became lost in the contemplation of the distant
+sea, lying still and glass-like in the moonlight.  He was looking to
+the north, and it happened that from that same point of the compass
+there was coming towards him the good steamer Bellver, on whose deck
+stood a little shock-headed man--Captain Bontnor.
+
+There is a regular service of steamers to and from the Island of
+Majorca to the mainland, and, in addition, steamers make voyages
+when pressure of traffic may demand.  The Bellver was making one of
+these supplemental journeys, and her arrival was not looked for at
+Palma.
+
+Eve and Fitz were having breakfast alone in the gloomy room
+overshadowed by the trailing wings of the Angel of Death, when the
+servant announced a gentleman to see the senorita.  The senorita
+requested that the gentleman might approach, and presently there
+stood in the doorway the quaintest little figure imaginable.
+
+Captain Bontnor, with a certain sense of the fitness of things, had
+put on his best clothes for this occasion, and it happened that the
+most superior garment in his wardrobe was a thick pilot-jacket,
+which stood out from his square person with solid angularity.  He
+had brushed his hair very carefully, applying water to compass a
+smoothness which had been his life-long and hitherto unattained aim.
+His shock hair--red turning to grey--stood up four inches from his
+honest, wrinkled face.  It was unfortunate that his best garments
+should have been purchased for the amenities of a northern climate.
+His trousers were as stiff as his jacket, and he wore a decorous
+black silk tie as large as a counterpane.
+
+He stood quaintly bowing in the doorway, his bright blue eyes veiled
+with shyness and a pathetic dumb self-consciousness.
+
+"Please come in," said Eve in Spanish, quite at a loss as to who
+this might be.
+
+Then Fitz had an inspiration.  Something of the sea seemed to be
+wafted from the older to the younger sailor.
+
+"Are you Captain Bontnor?" he asked, rising from the table.
+
+"Yes, sir, yes!  That's my name!"
+
+He stood nervously in the doorway, mistrusting the parquet-floor,
+mistrusting himself, mistrusting everything.
+
+Fitz went towards him holding out his hand, which the captain took
+after a manfully repressed desire to wipe his own broad palm on the
+seam of his trousers.
+
+"Then you are my uncle?" said Eve, coming forward.
+
+"Yes, miss, I'm afraid--that is--yes, I'm your uncle.  You see--I'm
+only a rough sort of fellow."
+
+He came a little nearer and held his arms apart, looking down at his
+own person in humble deprecation.
+
+Eve was holding out her hand.  He took it with a vague, deep-rooted
+chivalry, and she, stooping, very deliberately kissed him.
+
+This seemed rather to bewilder the captain, for he shook hands again
+with Fitz.
+
+"I-- " he began, nodding into Fitz's face.  "You are--eh?  I didn't
+expect--to see--I didn't know--"
+
+At that moment Eve saw.  It came to her in a flash, as most things
+do come to women.  She even had time to doubt the story about Luke.
+
+"This," she said, with crimson cheeks, "is Mr. FitzHenry of the
+Kittiwake.  He kindly came to us in our trouble.  You will have to
+thank him afterwards--uncle."
+
+"And in the meantime I expect you want breakfast?" put in Fitz,
+carefully avoiding Eve.
+
+"Yes," added the girl, "of course.  Sit down.  No, here!"
+
+"Thankye--thankye, miss--my dear, I mean.  Oh, anything'll do for
+me.  A bit of bread and a cup o' tea.  I had a bit and a sup on
+board before she sheered alongside the quay."
+
+He looked round rather helplessly, wondering where he should put his
+hat--a solid, flat-crowned British affair.  Eve took it from him and
+laid it aside.
+
+Captain Bontnor sat very stiffly down.  His square form did not seem
+to lose any of its height by the change of position, and with a
+stiff back he looked admiringly round the room, waiting like a child
+at a school treat.
+
+As the meal progressed he grew more at ease, telling them of the
+little difficulties of his journey, avoiding with a tact not always
+found inside a better coat all mention of the sad event which had
+caused him to take this long journey after his travelling days were
+done.
+
+That which set him at ease more than all else was the fact, at
+length fully grasped, that Fitz was, like himself, a sailor.  Here
+at least was a topic upon which he could converse with any man.
+General subjects only were discussed, as if by tacit consent.  No
+mention was made of the future until this was somewhat rudely
+brought before their notice by the announcement that a second
+visitor desired to see the senorita.
+
+With a more assured manner than that of his predecessor, a small,
+dark man came into the room, throwing off his cloak and handing it
+to the servant.  He bowed ceremoniously and with true Spanish grace
+to Eve, with less ceremony and more dignity to the two men.
+
+"I beg that your excellency will accept the sympathy of my deepest
+heart," he said.  "I regret to trouble you so soon after the great
+loss sustained by your excellency, indeed, by the whole island of
+Majorca.  But it is a matter of business.  Such things cannot be
+delayed.  Have I your excellency's permission to proceed?"
+
+"Certainly, senor."
+
+The man's clean-shaven face was like a mask.  The expressions seemed
+to come and go as if worked by machinery.  Sympathy was turned off,
+and in its place Polite-Attention-to-Business appeared.  From under
+his arm he drew a leather portfolio, which he placed upon the table.
+
+"The affairs of the late Cavalier Challoner were perhaps known to
+your excellency?"
+
+"No; I knew nothing of my father's affairs."
+
+Sympathy seemed to be struggling behind "Polite-Attention-to-
+Business," while for a moment a real look of distress flitted over
+the parchment face.  He paused for an instant, reflecting while he
+assorted his papers.
+
+"I am," he said, "the lawyer of his excellency the Count de
+Lloseta."
+
+Eve and Fitz exchanged a glance, and as silence was kept the lawyer
+went on.
+
+"Three generations ago," he said, "a Count de Lloseta, the
+grandfather of this present excellency, made over on 'rotas' the
+estate and house known as the Val d'Erraha to the grandfather of the
+late Cavalier Challoner--a Captain Challoner, one of Admiral Byng's
+men."
+
+Again he paused, arranging his papers.
+
+"The Majorcan system 'rotas' is known to your excellency?"
+
+"No, senor."
+
+"On this system an estate is made over for one or two or three
+generations by the proprietor to the lessee who farms or sublets the
+land, and in lieu of rent hands over to the proprietor a certain
+proportion of the crops.  Does your excellency follow me?"
+
+Eve did not answer at once.  Then the lawyer's meaning seemed to
+dawn upon her.
+
+"Then," she said, "the Casa d'Erraha never belonged to my father?"
+
+"Never"--with a grave bow.
+
+"And I have nothing--nothing at all!  I am penniless?"
+
+The lawyer looked from her to Fitz, who was standing beside her
+listening to the conversation, but not offering to take part in it.
+
+"Unless your excellency has private means--in England, perhaps."
+
+"I do not know--I know nothing.  And we must leave the Casa
+d'Erraha.  When, senor?  Tell me when."
+
+The lawyer avoided her distressed eyes.
+
+"Well," he said slowly, "the law is rather summary.  I--your
+excellency understands I only do my duty.  I am not the principal.
+I have no authority whatever--except the law."
+
+"You mean that I must go at once?"
+
+The lawyer's parchment face was generously expressive of grief now.
+
+"Excellency, the lease terminated at the death of the late Caballero
+Challoner."
+
+Eve stood for a moment, breathing hard.  Fate seemed suddenly to
+have turned against her at every point.  At this moment Captain
+Bontnor made bold--one could see him doing it--to take her hand.
+
+"My dear," he said, "I don't quite understand what this foreign
+gentleman and you are talkin' about.  But if it's trouble, dear, if
+it's trouble--just let me try."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.  IN THE STREET OF THE PEACE.
+
+     Measure thy life by loss instead of gain,
+     Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth.
+
+"MY DEAR MISS CHALLONER,--I learn that you are in Barcelona, and at
+the same time I find with some indignation that my lawyer in
+Mallorca, with a deplorable excess of zeal, has been acting without
+my orders in respect to the property of the Val d'Erraha.  I hasten
+to place myself and possessions at your disposition, and take the
+liberty of writing to request an interview, instead of calling on
+you at your hotel, for reasons which you will readily understand,
+knowing as you do the gossiping ways of hotels.  As an old friend of
+your father's, and one who moved and lived in neighbourly
+intercourse with him before your birth, and before the deplorable
+death of your mother, I now waive ceremony, and beg that you and
+your uncle will come and take tea with me this afternoon at my
+humble abode in the 'Calle de la Paz.'--Believe me, dear Miss
+Challoner, yours very sincerely,
+          "CIPRIANI DE LLOSETA DE MALLORCA."
+
+Eve read this letter in her room in the Hotel of the Four Nations at
+Barcelona.  She had only been on the mainland twenty-four hours when
+it was delivered to her by a servant of the Count's, who came to her
+apartment and delivered it into her own hands, as is the custom of
+Spanish servants.
+
+Eve Challoner had grown older during the last few days.  She had
+been brought face to face with life as it really is, and not as we
+dream it in the dreams of youth.  She was not surprised to receive
+this letter, although she had no idea that the Count de Lloseta was
+in Spain.  But the varying emotions of the last week had, as it
+were, undermined the confident hopefulness with which we look
+forward when we are young, and sometimes when we are old, to the
+management of our own lives here below.  She was beginning to
+understand certain terms which she had heard applied to human
+existence, and to which she had hitherto attached no special meaning
+as relating to herself.  More especially did she understand at this
+time that life may be compared to a stream, for she was vaguely
+conscious of drifting she knew not whither.
+
+Fitz had come suddenly into her life; Captain Bontnor had come into
+it; and now this man, Cipriani de Lloseta, seemed to be asserting
+his right to come into it too.  And she did not know quite what to
+do with them all.  She had never, in the quiet, dreamy days of her
+youth, pictured a life with any of these men in it, and the future
+was suddenly tremendous, unfathomable.  There were vast
+possibilities in it of misery, of danger, of difficulty; and behind
+these a vague, new feeling of a possible happiness far exceeding the
+happiness of her peaceful childhood.
+
+Without consulting her uncle, who had gone out into the street to
+walk backwards and forwards before the door, as he had walked
+backwards and forwards on his deck for forty years, she sat down and
+accepted the Count's informal invitation.  She seemed to do it
+without reflection, as if impelled thereto by something stronger
+than pro or con, as if acknowledging the Spaniard's right to come
+into her life, bringing to bear upon it an influence which she never
+attempted to fathom.
+
+Thus it came about that Eve and Captain Bontnor found themselves
+awaiting their host in the massive, gloomy drawing-room of the
+Palace in the Calle de la Paz at five o'clock that afternoon.
+
+Captain Bontnor had learnt a great deal during the last few days;
+among other things he had learnt to love his niece with a simple,
+dog-like devotion, which had a vein of pathos in it for those who
+see such things.  He placed himself well behind Eve, and looked
+around him with a wondering awe.
+
+"I think, my dear," he said, "that it would have been better if you
+had come alone.  I--you know I am getting too old to learn manners
+now--eh--he! he!  Yes.  Having been so long at sea, you know."
+
+"I think the sea teaches men manners, uncle," said Eve, with a
+little smile which he did not understand.  "At any rate," she went
+on, touching his rough sleeve affectionately, "it teaches them
+something that I like."
+
+"Does it, now?  What, now?  Tell me."
+
+"I do not know," answered the girl, as if speaking to herself, and
+at this moment the door was opened.  The man who came in was of
+medium height, with a long, narrow face, and singularly patient
+eyes.
+
+"I should have known you," he said, approaching Eve, and holding out
+his hand.  "You do not remember your mother?  I do, however.  You
+are like her--and she was a good woman.  And this is Captain
+Bontnor--your uncle."
+
+He shook hands with the old sailor without the faintest flicker of
+surprise at his somewhat incongruous appearance.
+
+"I am glad," he said suavely, "to make Captain Bontnor's
+acquaintance."
+
+He turned to draw forward a chair, and the light from the high,
+barred window falling full on his head, betrayed the fact that his
+hair, close cut as an English soldier's, was touched and flecked
+with grey.  His lithe youthfulness of frame rather surprised Eve,
+who knew him to be a contemporary of her father's.
+
+"It is very good of you to come," he went on in a low voice.  "I
+took the privilege of the elder generation, you see!  Captain, pray
+take that chair."
+
+He did the honours with a British ease of manner, strangely touched
+by a Spanish dignity.
+
+"When I heard of your great bereavement," he said, turning to Eve
+with a grave bow, "I ought perhaps to have gone to Mallorca at once
+to offer you what poor assistance was in my power.  But
+circumstances, over which I had no control, prevented my doing so.
+My offer of help is tardy, I know, but it is none the less sincere."
+
+"Thank you," replied Eve, conscious of a feeling of pleasant
+reliance in this new-found ally.  "But I have good friends--the
+Padre Fortis, my uncle, and--a friend of ours, Mr. FitzHenry."
+
+"Of the Kittiwake--at Mahon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have the pleasure of knowing Mr. FitzHenry," murmured the Count.
+"Now," he said, with a sudden smile which took her by surprise by
+reason of the alteration it made in the whole man, "will you do me a
+great favour?"
+
+"I should like to," answered Eve, with some hesitation.
+
+"And you?" said the Count, turning to Captain Bontnor.
+
+"Oh yes," replied that sailor bluntly, "if it's possible."
+
+"I want you," continued the Count de Lloseta, "to forget that this
+is the first time we meet, and to look upon me as a friend--one of
+the most intimate--of your father."
+
+"My father," said the girl, "always spoke of you as such."
+
+"Indeed, I am glad of that.  Now, tell me, who have you in the world
+besides Captain Bontnor?"
+
+"I have no one.  But--"
+
+"We was thinking," put in the Captain, in ungrammatical haste, "that
+Eve would come and live with me.  It isn't a grand house--just a
+little cottage.  But such as it is, she'll have a kindly welcome."
+
+"And, I have no doubt, a happy home", added the Count, with one of
+his dark smiles.  "I was merely wondering whether Miss Challoner
+intended to live in the Casa d'Erraha or to let it?"'
+
+Eve looked up in surprise, and Captain Bontnor's blue eyes wandered
+from her face to the dark and courteous countenance of Cipriani de
+Lloseta.
+
+"Perhaps," continued the Spaniard imperturbably, "you have not yet
+made up your mind on the subject."
+
+"But the Casa d'Erraha does not belong to me," said Eve, and Captain
+Bontnor wagged his head in confirmation.  "Your own lawyer explained
+to me that my father only held it on 'rotas.'"
+
+"My own lawyer, my dear young lady, thereby proved himself an ass."
+
+"But," said Eve, somewhat mystified, "the Val d'Erraha belongs to
+you, and you must know it.  I have no title-deeds--I have nothing."
+
+"Except possession, which is nine points of the law.  Will you take
+tea, and cream?  I do not know how many points the law has, but one
+would naturally conclude that nine is a large proportion of the
+whole."
+
+While he spoke he was pouring out the tea.  He handed a cup to her
+with a grave smile, as if the matter under discussion were one of a
+small and passing importance.
+
+"I suppose," he added, "you have learnt to love the Casa d'Erraha.
+It is a place--a place one might easily become attached to.  Do you
+know"--he turned his back to her, busying himself with the silver
+teapot--"Lloseta?" he added jerkily.
+
+"Yes.  My father and I used to go there very often."
+
+"Ah--" He waited--handing Captain Bontnor a cup of tea in silence.
+But Eve was not thinking of Lloseta; she was thinking of the Casa
+d'Erraha.
+
+"My father did not speak to me of his affairs," she said.  "He was
+naturally rather reserved, and--and it was very sudden."
+
+"Yes.  So I learnt.  That indeed is my excuse for intruding myself
+upon your notice at this time.  I surmised that my poor friend's
+affairs had been left in some confusion.  He was too thorough a
+gentleman to be competent in affairs.  I thought that perhaps my
+small influence and my diminutive knowledge of Majorcan law--the
+Roman law, in point of fact--might be of some use to you."
+
+"Thank you," she answered; "I think we settled everything before we
+left the island, although we did not see Senor Pena, your lawyer.
+I--the Casa d'Erraha belongs to you!" she added, suddenly descending
+to feminine reiteration.
+
+"Prove it," said the Count quietly.
+
+"I cannot do that."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with a smile.
+
+"Then," he said, "I am afraid you cannot shift your responsibility
+to my shoulders."
+
+The girl looked at him with puzzled young eyes.  He stood before
+her, dignified, eminently worthy of the great name he bore--a
+solitary, dark-eyed, inscrutable man, whose whole being subtly
+suggested hopelessness and an empty life.  She shook her head.
+
+"But I cannot accept the Casa d'Erraha on those terms."
+
+The Count drew forward a chair and sat down.
+
+"Listen," he said, with an explanatory forefinger upheld.  "Three
+generations ago two men made a verbal agreement in respect to the
+estate of the Val d'Erraha.  To-day no one knows what that agreement
+was.  It may have been the ordinary 'rotas' of Minorca.  It may not.
+In those days the English held Minorca; my ancestor may therefore
+have been indebted to your great-grandfather, for we have some small
+estates in Minorca.  You know what the islands are to-day.  They are
+two hundred years behind Northern Europe.  What must they have been
+a hundred and twenty years ago?  We have no means of finding out
+what passed between your great-grandfather and my grandfather.  We
+only know that three generations of Challoners have lived in the
+Casa d'Erraha, paying to the Counts of Lloseta a certain proportion
+of the product of the estate.  I do not mind telling you that the
+smallness of that proportion does away with the argument that the
+agreement was the ordinary 'rotas' of the Baleares.  We know
+nothing--we can prove nothing.  If you claimed the estate I might
+possibly wrest it from you--not by proof, but merely because the
+insular prejudice against a foreigner would militate against you in
+a Majorcan court of law.  I cannot legally force you to hold the
+estate of the Val d'Erraha.  I can only ask you as the daughter of
+one of my best friends to accept the benefit of a very small doubt."
+
+Eve hesitated.  What woman would not?
+
+Captain Bontnor set down his cup very gravely on the table.
+
+"I don't rightly understand," he said sturdily, "this 'rotas'
+business.  But it seems to me pretty plain that the estate never
+belonged to my late brother-in-law.  Now what I say is, if the place
+belongs by right to Miss Challoner she'll take it.  If it don't;
+well, then it don't, and she can't accept it as a present from
+anybody.  Much obliged to you all the same."
+
+The Count laughed pleasantly.
+
+"My dear sir, it is not a present."
+
+The Captain stuffed his hands very deeply into his pockets.
+
+"Then it's worse--it's charity.  And she has no need of that.  Thank
+ye all the same," he replied.
+
+He stared straight in front of him with a vague and rather painful
+suggestion of incapability that sometimes came over him.  He was
+wondering whether he was doing right in this matter.
+
+"If," he added, half to himself, as a sort of afterthought on the
+crying question of ways and means--"if it comes to that, I can go to
+sea again.  There's plenty would be ready to give me a ship."
+
+The Count was still smiling.
+
+"There is no question," he said, "of charity.  What has Miss
+Challoner done that I should offer her that?  I am in ignorance as
+to her affairs.  I do not know the extent of her income."
+
+"As far as we can make out," said Eve gently, "there is nothing.
+But I can work.  I thought that my knowledge of Spanish might enable
+me to make a living."
+
+"No," said Captain Bontnor, "I'm d---  I mean I should not like you
+to go governessing, my dear."
+
+The Count was apparently reflecting.
+
+"I have a compromise to propose," he said, addressing himself to
+Eve.  "If we place the property in the hands of a third person--you
+know the value of land in Majorca--to farm and tend; if at the end
+of each year the profits be divided between us?"
+
+But Eve's suspicions were aroused, and her woman's instinct took her
+further than did Captain Bontnor's sturdy sense of right and wrong.
+
+"I am afraid," she said, rising from her chair, "that I must refuse.
+I--I think I understand why papa always spoke of you as he did.  I
+am very grateful to you.  I know now that you have been trying to
+give me D'Erraha.  It was a generous thing to do--a most generous
+thing.  I think people would hardly believe me if I told them.  I
+can only thank you; for I have no possible means of proving to you
+how deeply I feel it.  Somehow"--she paused, with tears and a sad
+little smile in her eyes--"somehow it is not the gift that I
+appreciate so much as--as your way of trying to give it."
+
+The Spaniard spread out his two hands in deprecation.
+
+"My child," he murmured gently, "I have not another word to say."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.  THE DEAL.
+
+     Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
+     And the little less, and what worlds away!
+
+A howling gale of wind from the south-east, and driving snow and
+darkness.  The light of Cap Grisnez struggling out over the
+blackness of the Channel, and the two Foreland lights twinkling
+feebly from their snow-clad heights.  A night to turn in one's bed
+with a sleepy word of thanksgiving that one has a bed to turn in,
+and no pressing need to turn out of it.
+
+The smaller fry of Channel shipping have crept into Dungeness or the
+Downs.  Some of them have gone to the bottom.  Two of them are
+breaking up on the Goodwins.
+
+The Croonah Indian liner is pounding into it all, with white decks
+and whistling shrouds.  The passengers are below in their berths.
+Some of them--and not only the ladies--are sending up little
+shamefaced supplications to One who watches over the traveller in
+all places and at all times.
+
+And on the bridge of the Croonah a man all eyes and stern resolve
+and maritime instinct.  A man clad in his thickest clothes, and over
+all of them his black oilskins.  A man with three hundred lives
+depending upon his keen eyes, his knowledge, and his judgment.  A
+man whose name is Luke FitzHenry.
+
+The captain has gone below for a few minutes to thaw, leaving the
+ship to FitzHenry.  He does it with an easy conscience--as easy,
+that is, as the maritime conscience can well be in a gale of wind,
+with the Foreland lights ahead and infinite possibilities all
+around.  The captain drinks his whisky and hot water with a certain
+slow appreciation of the merits of that reprehensible solution, and
+glances at the aneroid barometer on the bulkhead of his cabin.
+
+Overhead, on the spidery bridge, far up in the howling night, Luke
+FitzHenry, returning from the enervating tropics, stares sternly
+into the night, heedless of the elemental warfare.  For Luke
+FitzHenry has a grudge against the world, and people who have that
+take a certain pleasure in evil weather.
+
+"The finest sailor that ever stepped," reflects the captain of his
+second officer--and he no mean mariner himself.
+
+The Croonah had groped her way up Channel through a snowstorm of
+three days' duration, and the brunt of it had fallen by right of
+seniority on the captain and his second officer.  Luke FitzHenry was
+indefatigable, and, better still, he was without enthusiasm.  Here
+was the steady, unflinching combativeness which alone can master the
+elements.  Here was the true genius of the sea.
+
+With his craft at his fingers' ends, Luke had that instinct of
+navigation by which some men seem to find their way upon the
+trackless waters.  There are sailors who are no navigators just as
+there are hunting men who cannot ride.  There are navigators who
+will steer you from London to Petersburg without taking a sight,
+from the Thames to the Suez Canal without looking at their sextant.
+Such a sailor as this was Luke FitzHenry.  Perfectly trained, he
+assimilated each item of experience with an insatiable greed for
+knowledge--and it was all maritime knowledge.  He was a sailor and
+nothing else.  But it is already something--as they say in France--
+to be a good sailor.
+
+Luke FitzHenry was a man of middle height, sturdy, with broad
+shoulders and a slow step.  His clean-shaven face was a long oval,
+with pessimistic, brooding eyes--eyes that saw everything except the
+small modicum of good which is in all human things, and to this they
+were persistently blind.  Taking into consideration the small, set
+mouth, it was eminently a pugnacious face--a face that might easily
+degenerate to the coarseness of passion in the trough of a losing
+fight.  But, fortunately, Luke's lines were cast upon the great
+waters, and he who fights the sea must learn to conquer, not by
+passionate effort, but by consistent, cool resolve.  Those who
+worked with him feared him, and in so doing learnt the habit of his
+ways.  The steersman, with one eye on the binnacle, knew always
+where to find him with the other; for Luke hardly moved during his
+entire watch on deck.  He took his station at the starboard end of
+the narrow bridge when he came on duty, and from that spot he rarely
+moved.  These little things betray a man, if one only has the
+patience to piece them together.
+
+Those who go down to the sea in ships, and even those who take their
+pleasure on the great water, know the relative merits of the man who
+goes to his post and stays there, and of him who is all over the
+ship and restless.
+
+Luke was standing now like a statue--black and gleaming amid the
+universal grey of the winter night, and his deep eyes, cat-like,
+pierced the surrounding gloom.
+
+Here was a man militant.  A man who must needs be fighting
+something, and Fate, with unusual foresight, had placed him in a
+position to fight Nature.  Luke FitzHenry rather revelled in a night
+such as this--the gloom, the horror, and the patent danger of it
+suited his morose, combative nature.  He loved danger and difficulty
+with the subtle form of love which a fighting man experiences for a
+relentless foe.
+
+From light to light he pushed his intrepid way through the darkness
+and the bewildering intricacies of the Downs, and in due time, in
+the full sunlight of the next day, the Croonah sidled alongside the
+quay in the Tilbury Dock.  The passengers, with their new lives
+before them, stumbled ashore, already forgetting the men who, smoke-
+begrimed and weary, had carried these lives within their hands
+during the last month or more.  They crowded down the gangway and
+left Luke to go to his cabin.
+
+There were two letters lying on the little table.  One from Fitz at
+Mahon, the other in a handwriting which Luke had almost forgotten.
+He turned it over with the subtle smile of a man who has a grudge
+against women.  But he opened it before the other.
+
+"DEAR LUKE,--I am glad to hear from Fitz that you are making your
+way in the Merchant Service.  He tells me that your steamer, the
+Croonah, has quite a reputation on the Indian route, and your
+fellow-officers are all gentlemen.  I shall be pleased to see you to
+dinner the first evening you have at your disposal.  I dine at
+seven-thirty.--Believe me, yours very truly, MARIAN HARRINGTON.
+
+"P.S.--I shall deem it a favour if you will come in dress clothes,
+as I have visitors."
+
+And, strange to say, it was the feminine stab in the postscript that
+settled the matter.  Luke sat down and wrote out a telegram at once,
+accepting Mrs. Harrington's invitation for the same evening.
+
+When he rang the bell of the great house in Grosvenor Gardens at
+precisely half-past seven that evening, he was conscious of a
+certain sense of elation.  He was quite sure of himself.
+
+He thought that the large drawing-room was empty when the butler
+ushered him into it, and some seconds elapsed before he discerned
+the form of a young lady in a deep chair near the fire.
+
+The girl turned her head and rose from the chair with a smile and a
+certain grace of manner which seemed in some indefinite way to have
+been put on with her evening dress.  For a moment Luke gazed at her,
+taken aback.  Then he bowed gravely, and she burst into a merry
+laugh.
+
+"How funny!" she cried.  "You do not know me?"
+
+"No-o-o," he answered, searching his mind.  For he was a passenger
+sailor, and many men and women crossed his path during the year.
+
+She came forward with a coquettish little laugh and placed herself
+beneath the gas, inviting his inspection, sure of herself, confident
+in her dressmaker.
+
+She was small and very upright, with a peculiarly confident carriage
+of the head, which might indicate determination or, possibly, a mere
+resolution to get her money's worth.  Her hair, perfectly dressed,
+was of the colour of a slow-worm.  She called it fair.  Her enemies
+said it reminded them of snakes.  Her eyes were of a darker shade of
+ashen grey, verging on hazel.  Her mouth was mobile, with thin lips
+and an expressive corner--the left-hand corner--and at this moment
+it suggested pert inquiry.  Some people thought she had an
+expressive face, but then some people are singularly superficial in
+their mode of observation.  There was really no power of expressing
+any feeling in the small, delicately cut face.  It all lay in the
+mouth, in the left-hand corner thereof.
+
+"Well?" she said, and Luke's wonder gradually faded into admiration.
+
+"I give it up," he answered.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders in pretended disgust.
+
+"You are not polite," she said, with a glance at his stalwart person
+which might have indicated that there were atoning merits.  "I must
+say you are not polite, Luke.  I do not think I will tell you.  It
+would be still more humiliating to learn that you have forgotten my
+existence."
+
+"You cannot be Agatha!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Can I not?  It happens that I AM Agatha Ingham-Baker--at your
+service!"
+
+She swept him a low curtsey and sailed away to the mantelpiece,
+thereby giving him the benefit of the exquisite fit of her dress.
+She stood with one arm on the mantel-shelf, looking back at him over
+her shoulder, summing him up with a little introspective nod.
+
+"I should like to know why I cannot be Agatha," she asked, with that
+keen feminine scent for a personality which leads to the uttering of
+so much nonsense, and the brewing of so much mischief.
+
+"I never thought--" he began.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+He laughed and refused to go any farther, although she certainly
+made the way easy for him.
+
+"In fact," she said mockingly, "you are disappointed.  You never
+expected me to turn out such a horrid--"
+
+"You know it isn't that," he interrupted, with a flash of his gloomy
+eyes.
+
+"Not now," she said quietly, glancing towards the door.  "I hear
+Mrs. Harrington coming downstairs.  You can tell me afterwards."
+
+Luke turned on his heel and greeted Mrs. Harrington with quite a
+pleasant smile, which did not belong to her by rights, but to the
+girl behind him.
+
+Fitz had been away for two years.  Mrs. Harrington in making
+overtures of peace to Luke had been prompted by the one consistent
+motive of her life, self-gratification.  She was tired of the
+obsequious society of persons like the Ingham-Bakers, whom she
+mentally set down as parasites.  There is a weariness of the flesh
+that comes to rich women uncontrolled.  They weary of their own
+power.  Tyranny palls.  Mrs. Harrington was longing to be thwarted
+by some one stronger than herself.  The FitzHenrys even in their
+boyhood had, by their sturdy independence, their simple, seamanlike
+self-assertion, touched some chord in this lone woman's heart which
+would not vibrate to cringing fingers.
+
+She had sent for Luke because Fitz was away.  She wanted to be
+thwarted.  She would have liked to be bullied.  And also there was
+that subtle longing for the voice, the free gesture, the hearty
+manliness of one whose home is on the sea.
+
+As Luke turned to greet her with the rare smile on his face he was
+marvellously like Fitz.  He was well dressed.  There was not the
+slightest doubt that this was a gentleman.  Nay, more, he looked
+distinguished.  And above all, he carried himself like a sailor.  So
+the reconciliation was sudden and therefore complete.  A
+reconciliation to be complete must be sudden.  It is too delicate a
+thing to bear handling.
+
+Luke had come intending to curse.  He began to feel like staying to
+bless.  He was quite genial and pleasant, greeting Mrs. Ingham-Baker
+as an old friend, and thereby distinctly upsetting that lady's
+mental equilibrium.  She had endeavoured to prevent this meeting,
+because she thought it was not fair to Fitz.  She noted the approval
+with which Mrs. Harrington's keen eyes rested on the young sailor,
+and endeavoured somewhat obviously to draw Agatha's attention to it
+by frowns and heavily significant nods, which her dutiful daughter
+ignored.
+
+Mrs. Harrington glanced impatiently at the clock.
+
+"That stupid Count is late," she said.
+
+"Is the Count de Lloseta coming?" asked Mrs. Ingham-Baker eagerly.
+
+From the strictly impartial standpoint of a mother she felt sure
+that the Count admired Agatha.
+
+"Yes," answered Mrs. Harrington, with a cynical smile.
+
+And Mrs. Ingham-Baker, heedless of the sarcasm, was already engaged
+in an exhaustive examination of Agatha's dress.  She crossed the
+room and delicately rectified some microscopic disorder of the
+snake-like hair.  With a final glance up and down, she crossed her
+arms at her waist and looked complacently towards the door.
+
+The Count came in, and failed to realise the hope that apparently
+buoyed Mrs. Ingham-Baker's maternal heart.  He did not strike an
+attitude or cover his dazzled eyes when they rested on Agatha.  He
+merely came forward with his gravest smile and uttered the pleasant
+fictions appropriate to the occasion.  Mrs. Ingham-Baker was marked
+in her gracious reception of the Spaniard, and the hostess watched
+her effusions with a queer little smile.
+
+At dinner Mrs. Ingham-Baker was opposite to the Count, who seemed
+preoccupied and somewhat absent-minded.  Her attention was divided
+between an anticipatory appreciation of Mrs. Harrington's cook and
+an evident admiration for her own daughter.
+
+"Agatha was just saying," observed the stout lady between the candle
+shades, "that we had not seen the Count de Lloseta for quite a long
+time.  Only yesterday, was it not, dear?"
+
+Agatha acquiesced.
+
+"The loss," answered the Count, "is mine.  But it is more than made
+good by the news that my small absence was noted.  I have been
+abroad."
+
+Mrs. Harrington at the end of the table looked up sharply, and a few
+drops of soup fell from her upraised spoon with a splash.
+
+"In Spain?" she asked.
+
+"In Spain."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.  CUT FOR PARTNERS.
+
+     Beware equally of a sudden friend and a slow enemy.
+
+A wise man had said of Cipriani de Lloseta that had he not been a
+Count he would have been a great musician.  He had that singular
+facility with any instrument which is sometimes given to musical
+persons in recompense for voicelessness.  The Count spoke like one
+who could sing, but his throat was delicate, and so the world lost a
+great singer.  Of most instruments he spoke with a half-concealed
+contempt.  But of the violin he said nothing.  He was not a man to
+turn the conversational overflow upon self-evident facts.
+
+He invariably brought his violin to Grosvenor Gardens when Mrs.
+Harrington invited him, in her commanding way, to dine.  It amused
+Mrs. Harrington to accompany his instrument on the piano.  Her music
+was of the accompanying order.  It was heartless and correct.  Some
+of us, by the way, have friends of this same order, and, like Mrs.
+Harrington's music, they are not in themselves either interesting or
+pleasant.
+
+The piano stood in the inner drawing-room, and thither the Count and
+Mrs. Harrington repaired when the gentlemen had joined the ladies.
+In the larger drawing-room Luke was fortunate enough to secure a
+seat near to Agatha--quite near, and a long way from Mrs. Ingham-
+Baker, digestively asleep in an armchair.
+
+He did not exactly know how this arrangement was accomplished--it
+seemed to come.  Possibly Agatha knew.
+
+Mrs. Harrington struck a keynote and began playing the prelude of a
+piece well known to them both.
+
+"Why did you not tell me that you were going to Spain?" she asked
+somewhat tersely, under cover of her own chords.
+
+"Had I known that it would interest you--" murmured De Lloseta,
+tightening his bow.  There was a singular gleam in his eye.  The
+gleam that one sees in the eye of a dog which has been thrashed,
+telling the wise that one day the dog will turn.
+
+"I am always interested," said the grey lady slowly, "in Spain--and
+even in Mallorca."
+
+She used the Spanish name of the island with the soft roll in the
+throat that English people rarely acquire.  He was prepared for it,
+standing with raised bow, looking past her iron-grey head to the
+music.  She glanced back over her shoulder into his face with the
+cruel cat-like love of torture that some people possess.  Far away
+in the distant wisdom of Providence it had been decreed that this
+woman should have no child less clever than herself to tease into
+hopelessness.
+
+The Spaniard laid his magic bow to the strings, leaving her to
+follow.  He tucked the violin against his collar with a little
+caressing motion of his chin, and in a few moments he seemed to
+forget all else than the voice of the instrument.  There are a few
+musicians who can give to a violin the power of speech.  They can
+make the instrument tell some story--not a cheery tale, but rather
+like the story that dogs tell us sometimes--a story which seems to
+have a sequence of its own, and to be quite intelligible to its
+teller; but to us it is only comprehensible in part, like a tale
+that is told dramatically in a tongue unknown.
+
+The Count stood up and played with no fine frenzy, no rolling eyes,
+no swaying form; for such are the signs of a hopeless effort, hung
+out by the man who has heard the story and tries in vain to tell it
+himself.
+
+Even Agatha was outdone, for Luke drifted off into absent-
+mindedness, and after a little effort she left him to return at his
+own time.  She listened to the music herself, but it did not seem to
+touch her.  For sound ascends, and this was already above Agatha
+Ingham-Baker's head.  The piece over, Mrs. Harrington selected
+another.
+
+"You did not go across to Mallorca?" she inquired, in a voice that
+did not reach the other room.  "No," he answered, "I did not go
+across to Mallorca."
+
+He stepped back a pace to move a chair which was too near to him,
+and the movement made it impossible for her to continue the
+conversation without raising her voice.  She countered at once by
+rising and laying the music aside.
+
+"I am too tired for more," she said.  "You must ask Agatha to
+accompany you.  She plays beautifully.  I have it from her mother!"
+
+Mrs. Harrington stood for a moment looking into the other room.
+Luke and Agatha were talking together with some animation.
+
+"I have been very busy lately," she said conversationally.  "Perhaps
+you have failed to notice that I have had this room redecorated?"
+
+He looked round the apartments with a smile, which somehow conveyed
+a colossal contempt.  "Very charming," he said.
+
+"It was done by a good man and cost a round sum."  She paused,
+looking at him with a mocking glance.  "In fact, I am rather in need
+of money.  My balance at the bank is not so large as I could wish."
+
+The Count's dark eyes rested on her face with the small gleam in
+their depths which has already been noted.
+
+"I am not good at money matters," he said.  "But, so far as I
+recollect, you have already exceeded our--"
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"And, unless my memory plays me false, there was a distinct promise
+that this should not occur again.  Perhaps a lady's promise--"
+
+"Possibly."
+
+The Count contented himself with a derisive laugh beneath his
+breath, and waited for her to speak again.  This she did as she
+moved towards the other room.
+
+"I think five hundred pounds would suffice--at present.  Agatha,"
+she continued, raising her voice, "come and play the Count's
+accompaniment.  He finds fault with me to-night"
+
+"No.  I only suggested a little piu lento!  You take it too fast."
+
+"Ah!  Well, I want to talk to Luke.  Come, Agatha."
+
+"I tremble at the thought of my own temerity," said Miss Ingham-
+Baker, as she seated herself on a music-stool with a great rustle of
+silks and considerable play of her white arms.
+
+"Are you bold?" inquired the Count, with impenetrable suavity.
+
+"I am--to attempt your accompaniments.  I expect to be found fault
+with."
+
+"It will at all events be a novelty," he answered, setting the music
+in order.
+
+The Spaniard opened the music-book and indicated the page.  Agatha
+dashed at it with characteristic confidence, and the voice of the
+violin came singing softly into the melody.  It was a better
+performance than the last.  Agatha's playing was much less correct,
+but as she went on she forgot herself, and she put something into
+the accompaniment which Mrs. Harrington had left out.  It was not
+time, neither was it a stricter attention to the composer's
+instructions.  It was only a possibility, after all.
+
+In the other room Mrs. Ingham-Baker slumbered still.  Mrs.
+Harrington, unmoved in her grey silk dress, was talking with her
+usual incisiveness, and Luke was listening gravely.  When the piece
+was done, Mrs. Harrington said over her shoulder -
+
+"Go on.  You get on splendidly together."
+
+And she returned to her conversation with Luke.
+
+The Count looked through his music.
+
+"How devoted she is to her nephews!" said Agatha, tapping the ivory
+keyboard with a dainty finger.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And apparently to both alike."
+
+There was a little flicker beneath the Count's lowered eyelids.
+
+"Apparently so," he answered, with assumed hesitation.
+
+Agatha continued playfully, tapping the ivory notes with her middle
+finger--the others being gracefully curled.
+
+"You speak as if you doubted the impartiality."
+
+"I am happy to say I always doubt a woman's impartiality."
+
+She laughed and drew the stool nearer to the piano.  It would have
+been easier to drift away into the conversational channel of vague
+generality which he opened up.  He waited with some curiosity.
+
+"Do you think there is a preference?" she said, falling into his
+small trap.
+
+"Ah!  There you ask me something that is beyond my poor powers of
+discrimination.  Mrs. Harrington does not wear her feelings on her
+sleeve.  She is difficult."
+
+"Very," admitted Agatha, with a little sigh.
+
+"I am naturally interested in the FitzHenrys," she went on after a
+little pause, with baffling frankness.  "You see, we were children
+together."
+
+"So I understand.  I too am interested in them--merely because I
+like them."
+
+"I am afraid," continued Agatha, tentatively turning the pages of
+the music which he had set before her, speaking as if she was only
+half thinking of what she was saying--"I am afraid that Mrs.
+Harrington is the sort of person to do an injustice.  She almost
+told my mother that she intended to leave all her money to one of
+them."
+
+Again that little flicker of the Count's patient eyelids.
+
+"Indeed!" he said.  "To which one?"
+
+Agatha shrugged her shoulders and began playing.  "That is not so
+much the question.  It is the principle--the injustice--that one
+objects to."
+
+"Of course," murmured De Lloseta, with a little nod.  "Of course."
+
+They went on playing, and in the other room Mrs. Harrington talked
+to Luke.  Mrs. Ingham-Baker appeared to slumber, but her friend and
+hostess suspected her of listening.  She therefore raised her voice
+at intervals, knowing the exquisite torture of unsatisfied
+curiosity, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker heard the word "Fitz," and the
+magic syllables "money," more than once, but no connecting phrase to
+soothe her aching mental palate.
+
+"And is your life a hard one?" Mrs. Harrington was asking.  She had
+been leading up to this question for some time--inviting his
+confidence, seeking the extent of her own power.  A woman is not
+content with possessing power; she wishes to see the evidence of it
+in the lives of others.
+
+"No," answered Luke, unconsciously disappointing her; "I cannot say
+that it is."
+
+He was strictly, sternly on his guard.  There was not the faintest
+possibility of his ever forgiving this woman.
+
+"And you are getting on in your career?"
+
+"Yes, thank you."
+
+Mrs. Harrington's grey eyes rested on his face searchingly.
+
+"Perhaps I could help you," she said, "with my small influence, or--
+or by other means."
+
+"Thank you," he said again without anger, serene in his complete
+independence.
+
+Mrs. Harrington frowned.  A dream passed through her mind--a great
+desire.  What if she could crush this man's pride?  For his six
+years' silence had never ceased to gall her.  What if she could
+humble him so completely that he would come asking the help she so
+carelessly offered?
+
+With a woman's instinct she hit upon the only possible means of
+attaining this end.  She did not pause to argue that a nature such
+as Luke's would never ask anything for itself--that it is precisely
+such as he who have no pride when they ask for another, sacrificing
+even that for that other's sake.
+
+Following her own thoughts, Mrs. Harrington looked pensively into
+the room where Agatha was sitting.  The girl was playing, with a
+little frown of concentration.  The wonderful music close to her ear
+was busy arousing that small possibility.  Agatha did not know that
+any one was looking at her.  The two pink shades of the piano
+candles cast a becoming light upon her face and form.
+
+Mrs. Harrington's eyes came surreptitiously round.  Luke also was
+looking at Agatha.  And a queer little smile hovered across Mrs.
+Harrington's lips.  The dream was assuming more tangible
+proportions.  Mrs. Harrington began to see her way; already her
+inordinate love of power was at work.  She could not admit even to
+herself that Luke FitzHenry had escaped her.  Women never know when
+they have had enough.
+
+"How long are you to be in London?" she asked, with a sudden
+kindness.
+
+"Only a fortnight."
+
+"Well, you must often come and see me.  I shall have the Ingham-
+Bakers staying with me a few weeks longer.  It is dull for poor
+Agatha with only two old women in the house.  Come to lunch to-
+morrow, and we can do something in the afternoon."
+
+"Thank you very much," said Luke.
+
+"You will come?"
+
+"I should like nothing better."
+
+And so the music went on--and the game.  Some played a losing game
+from the beginning, and others played without quite knowing the
+stake.  Some held to certain rules, while others made the rules as
+they went along--as children do--ignorant of the tears that must
+inevitably follow.  But Fate placed all the best cards in Mrs.
+Harrington's hand.
+
+Luke and the Count Cipriani de Lloseta went out of the house
+together.  They walked side by side for some yards while a watchful
+hansom followed.
+
+"Can I give you a lift?" said De Lloseta at length.  "I am going
+down to the Peregrinator's."
+
+"Thanks, no.  I shall go straight to my rooms.  I have not had my
+clothes off for three nights."
+
+"Ah, you sailors!  I am going down to have my half-hour over a book
+to compose my mind."
+
+"Do you read much?"
+
+De Lloseta called the cab with a jerk of his head.  Before stepping
+into it he looked keenly into his companion's face.
+
+"Yes, a good deal.  I read somewhere, lately, that it is never wise
+to accept favours from a woman; she will always have more than her
+money's worth.  Good-night."
+
+And he drove away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.  THE GAME OPENS.
+
+     Ce qu'on dit a l'etre a qui on dit tout n'est pas la moitie de
+ce qu'on lui cache.
+
+Agatha sent her maid to bed and sat down before her bedroom fire to
+brush her hair.
+
+Miss Ingham-Baker had, only four years earlier, left a fashionable
+South Coast boarding-school fully educated for the battle of life.
+There seem to be two classes of young ladies' boarding-schools.  In
+the one they are educated with a view of faring well in this world,
+in the other the teaching mostly bears upon matters connected with
+the next.  In the last-mentioned class of establishment the young
+people get up early and have very little material food to eat.  So
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker wisely sent her daughter to the worldly school.
+This astute lady knew that girls who get up very early to attend
+public worship in the dim hours, and have poor meals during the day,
+do not as a rule make good matches.  They have no time to do their
+hair properly, and are not urged so much thereto as to punctuality
+at compline, or whatever the service may be.  And it is thus that
+the little habits are acquired, and the little habits make the
+woman, therefore the little habits make the match.  Quod erat
+demonstrandum.
+
+So Agatha was sent to a worldly school, where they promenaded in the
+King's Road, and were taught at an early age to recognise the glance
+of admiration when they saw it.  They were brought up to desire nice
+clothes, and to wear the same stylishly.  On Sunday they wore
+bonnets, and promenaded with additional enthusiasm.  Their youthful
+backs were straightened out by some process which the writer, not
+having been educated at a girls' school, cannot be expected to
+detail.  They were given excellent meals at healthy hours, and the
+reprehensible habits of the lark were treated with contumely.  They
+were given to understand that it was good to be smart always, and
+even smarter at church.  Religious fervour, if it ran to limpness of
+dress, or form, or mind, was punishable according to law.  A
+wholesome spirit of competition was encouraged, not in the taking of
+many prizes, the attending of many services, or the acquirement of
+much Euclid, but in dress, smartness, and the accomplishments.
+
+"My girls always marry!" Miss Jones was wont to say with a
+complacent smile, and mothers advertised it.
+
+Agatha had been an apt pupil.  She came away from Miss Jones a
+finished article.  Miss Jones had indeed looked in vain for Agatha's
+name in that right-hand column of the Morning Post where fashionable
+arrangements are noted, and in the first column of the Times, where
+further social events have precedence.  But that was entirely
+Agatha's fault.  She came, and she saw, but she had not hitherto
+seen anything worth conquering.  So many of her school friends had
+married on the impulse of the moment for mere sentimental reasons,
+remaining as awful and harassed warnings in suburban retreats where
+rents are moderate and the census on the flow.  If there was one
+thing Miss Jones despised more than love in a cottage, it was that
+intangible commodity in a suburban villa.
+
+Agatha, in a word, meant to do well for herself, and she was dimly
+grateful to her mother for having foreseen this situation and
+provided for it by a suitable education.
+
+She was probably thinking over the matter while she brushed her
+hair, for she was deeply absorbed.  There was a knock at the door--a
+timid, deprecatory knock.
+
+"Oh, come in!" cried Agatha.
+
+The door opened and disclosed Mrs. Ingham-Baker, stout and cringing,
+in a ludicrous purple dressing-gown.
+
+"May I come and warm myself at your fire, dear?" she inquired
+humbly; "my own is so low."
+
+"That," said Agatha, "is because you are afraid of the servants."
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker closed the door and came towards the fire with
+surreptitious steps.  It would not be truthful to say that she came
+on tiptoe, her build not warranting that mode of progression.
+Agatha watched her without surprise.  Mrs. Ingham-Baker always moved
+like that in her dressing-gown.  Like many ladies, she put on
+stealth with that garment.
+
+"How beautifully the Count plays!" said the mother.
+
+"Beautifully!" answered Agatha.
+
+And neither was thinking of Cipriani de Lloseta.
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker gave a little sigh, and contemplated her wool-work
+bedroom slippers with an affection which their appearance certainly
+did not warrant.  There was a suggestion of bygone defeats in sigh
+and attitude--defeats borne with the resignation that followeth on
+habit.
+
+"I don't believe," she said, "that he will ever marry again."
+
+The girl tossed her pretty head.
+
+"I shouldn't think any one would have him!"
+
+She was not of the campaigners who admit defeat.  Mrs. Ingham-Baker
+sighed again, and put out the other slipper.
+
+"He must be very rich!--a palace in Barcelona--a palace!"
+
+"Other people have castles in Spain," replied Agatha, without any of
+that filial respect which our grandmothers were pleased to affect.
+There was nothing old-fashioned or effete about Agatha--she was, on
+the contrary, essentially modern.
+
+The elder lady did not catch the allusion, and dived deep into
+thought.  She supposed that Agatha had met and danced with other
+rich Spaniards, and could have any one of them by the mere raising
+of her little finger.  Her attitude towards her daughter was that of
+an old campaigner who, having done well in a bygone time, has the
+good sense to recognise the deeper science of a modern warfare,
+being quite content with a small command in the rear.
+
+To carry out the simile, she now gathered from this conversational
+reconnaissance that the younger and abler general at the front was
+about to alter the object of attack.  She had, in fact, come in not
+to warm, but to inform herself.
+
+"Mrs. Harrington seemed to take to Luke," said Agatha, behind her
+hair.
+
+"Yes," answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker, proceeding carefully, for she was
+well in hand--"wonderfully so!  Poor Fitz seems to stand a very good
+chance of being cut out."
+
+"Fitz will have to look after himself," opined the young lady.  "Did
+she say anything to you after I came to bed?  I came away on
+purpose."
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker glanced towards the door, and drew her dressing-
+gown more closely round her.
+
+"WELL," she began volubly, "of course I said what a nice fellow Luke
+was, so manly and simple, and all that.  And she quite agreed with
+me.  I said that perhaps he would get on after all and not bring
+disgrace upon all her kindness."
+
+"What do you mean by THAT?" inquired Agatha.
+
+"I don't know, my dear, but I said it.  And she said she hoped so.
+Then I asked her if she knew what his wages or salary, or whatever
+they are called, amounted to, and what his prospects are.  She said
+she knew nothing about his salary, but that his prospects were quite
+a different matter.  I pretended I did not know what she meant.  So
+she gave a little sigh and said that one could not expect to live
+for ever.  I said that I was sure I wished some people could, and
+she smiled in a funny way."
+
+"You do not seem to have done it very well," the younger and more
+scientific campaigner observed coldly.
+
+"Oh, but it was all right, Agatha dear.  I understand her so well.
+And I said I was sure that Luke would deserve anything he got; that
+of course it was different for Fitz, because his life is all set out
+straight before him.  And she said I was quite right."
+
+The report was finished, and Agatha sat for some moments with the
+brush on her lap looking into the fire with the deep thoughtfulness
+of a cool tactician.
+
+"I am SURE he was struck with you," said the mother fervently.
+
+After all she was only fit for a very small command very far in the
+rear.  She never saw the singular light in Agatha's eyes.
+
+"Do you think so?" said the girl, half dreamily.
+
+"I am sure of it."
+
+Agatha began brushing her hair again.
+
+"What makes you think so?" she inquired through the snaky canopy.
+
+"He never took his eyes off you when you were playing the Count's
+accompaniment."
+
+The girl suddenly rose and went to the dressing-table.  The candles
+there were lighted, one on each side of the mirror.  Agatha saw that
+her mother was still admiring her bedroom slippers.  Then she looked
+at the reflection of her own face with the smooth hair hanging
+straight down over either shoulder.  She gazed long and curiously as
+if seeking something in the pleasant reflection.
+
+"Did she say anything more about Fitz?" she asked suddenly, with an
+obvious change of the subject which Mrs. Ingham-Baker did not
+attempt to understand.  She was not a subtle woman.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+Agatha came back and sat down.
+
+"And you are quite sure she said exactly what you have told me,
+about not expecting to live for ever."
+
+"Quite."
+
+Then followed a long silence.  A belated cab rattled past beneath
+the windows.  There was apparently a cowl on the chimney connected
+with Agatha's room, for at intervals a faint groaning sound came,
+apparently from the fireplace.
+
+Agatha leant forward with her chin on her two hands, her elbows on
+her knees.  Her hair hung almost to the ground.  She was looking
+into the coals with thoughtful eyes.  The elder tactician waited in
+respectful silence.
+
+"Suppose-- " said the girl suddenly, and stopped.
+
+"Yes, my darling."
+
+"Suppose we accept the Danefords' invitation?"
+
+"To go to Malta?"
+
+"Yes, to go to Malta."
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker fell into a puzzled, harassed reverie.  This
+modern warfare was so complicated.  The younger, keener tactician
+did not seem to demand an answer to her supposition.  She proceeded
+to follow out the train of her own thoughts in as complete an
+absorption as if she had been alone in the room.
+
+"The voyage," she said, "would be a pleasant change if we selected a
+good boat."
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker reflected for a moment.
+
+"We might go in the Croonah with Luke," she then observed timidly.
+
+"Ye-es."
+
+And after a little while Mrs. Ingham-Baker rose and bade her
+daughter good-night.
+
+Agatha remained before the fire in the low chair with her face
+resting on her two hands, and who can tell all that she was
+thinking?  For the thoughts of youth are very quick.  They are
+different from the thoughts of maturity, inasmuch as they rise
+higher into happiness and descend deeper into misery.  Agatha
+Ingham-Baker knew that she had her own life to shape, with only such
+blundering, well-meant assistance as her mother could give her.  She
+had found out that the world cannot pause to help the stricken, or
+to give a hand to the fallen, but that it always has leisure to
+cringe and make way for the successful.
+
+Other girls had been successful.  Why should not she?  And if--and
+if -
+
+The next morning at breakfast Mrs. Ingham-Baker took an opportunity
+of asking Mrs. Harrington if she knew Malta.
+
+"Malta," answered the grey lady, "is a sort of Nursery India.  I
+have known girls marry at Malta, but I have known more who were
+obliged to go to India."
+
+"That," answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker, "is exactly what I am afraid
+of."
+
+"Having to go on to India?" inquired Mrs. Harrington, looking over
+her letters.
+
+"No.  I am afraid that Malta is not quite the place one would like
+to take one's daughter to."
+
+"That depends, I should imagine, upon the views one may have
+respecting one's daughter," answered the lady of the house
+carelessly.
+
+At this moment Agatha came in looking fresh and smart in a tweed
+dress.  There was something about her that made people turn in the
+streets to look at her again.  For years she had noted this with
+much satisfaction.  But she was beginning to get a little tired of
+the homage of the pavement.  Those who turned to glance a second
+time never came back to offer her a heart and a fortune.  She was
+perhaps beginning faintly to suspect that which many of us know--
+namely, that she who has the admiration of many rarely has the love
+of one; and if by chance she gets this, she never knows its value
+and rarely keeps it.
+
+"I was just asking Mrs. Harrington about Malta, dear," exclaimed
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker.  "It is a nice place, is it not, Marian?"
+
+"I believe it is."
+
+"And somehow I quite want to go there.  I can't think why," said
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker volubly.  "It would be so nice to get a little
+sunshine after these grey skies, would it not, dear?"
+
+Agatha gave a little shiver as she sat down.
+
+"It would be very nice to feel really warm," she said.  "But there
+is the horrid sea voyage."
+
+"I dare say you would enjoy that very much after the first two
+days," put in Mrs. Harrington.
+
+"Especially if we select a nice large boat--one of those with two
+funnels?" put in Mrs. Ingham-Baker.  "Now I wonder what boat we
+could go by?"
+
+"Luke's," suggested Mrs. Harrington, with cynical curtness.  There
+was a subtle suggestion of finality in her tone, a tiniest note of
+weariness which almost said -
+
+"Now we have reached our goal."
+
+"I suppose," said Mrs. Ingham-Baker doubtfully, "that it is really a
+fine vessel?"
+
+"So I am told."
+
+"I really expect," put in Agatha carelessly, "that one steamer is as
+good as another."
+
+Mrs. Harrington turned on her like suave lightning.
+
+"But one boat is not so well officered as another, my dear!" she
+said.
+
+Agatha--not to be brow-beaten, keen as the older fencer--looked Mrs.
+Harrington straight in the face.
+
+"You mean Luke," she said.  "Of course I dare say he is a good
+officer.  But one always feels doubtful about trusting one's
+friends--does one not?"
+
+"One does," answered Mrs. Harrington, turning to her letters.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.  SHIPS UPON THE SEA.
+
+     All such things touch secret strings
+     For heavy hearts to bear.
+
+"And you don't seem to care."
+
+Agatha smiled a little inward smile of triumph.
+
+"Don't I?" she answered, with a sidelong glance beneath her lashes.
+
+Luke stared straight in front of him with set lips.  He looked a
+dangerous man to trifle with, and what woman can keep her hands out
+of such danger as this?
+
+They were walking backwards and forwards on the broad promenade deck
+of the Croonah, and the Croonah was gliding through the grey waters
+of the Atlantic.  To their left lay the coast of Portugal smiling in
+the sunshine.  To their right the orb of day himself, lowering
+cloudless to the horizon.  Ahead, bleak and lonely, lay the dread
+Burlings.  The maligned Bay of Biscay lay behind, and already a
+large number of the passengers had plucked up spirit to leave the
+cabin stairs, crawling on deck to lie supine in long chairs and talk
+hopefully of calmer days to come.
+
+Agatha had proved herself to be a good sailor.  She walked beside
+Luke FitzHenry with her usual dainty firmness of step and confidence
+of carriage.  Luke himself--in uniform--looked sternly in earnest.
+
+They had been talking of Gibraltar, where the Croonah was to touch
+the next morning, and Luke had just told Agatha that he could not go
+ashore with her and Mrs. Ingham-Baker.
+
+"Don't I?" the girl reiterated with a little sigh.
+
+"Well, it does not sound like it."
+
+"The truth is," said Agatha, "that I have an inward conviction that
+it would only be more trouble than it is worth."
+
+"What would be more trouble than it is worth?"
+
+"Going ashore."
+
+"Then you will not go?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"I think not," she answered, with demure downcast eyes.
+
+And Luke FitzHenry was the happiest man on board the Croonah.  There
+was no mistaking her meaning.  Luke, who knew himself to be a
+pessimist--a man who persistently looked for ill-fortune--felt that
+her meaning could not well be other than that she preferred
+remaining on board because he could not go ashore.
+
+The dinner bell rang out over the quiet decks, and, with a familiar
+little nod, Agatha turned away from her companion.
+
+The next morning saw the Croonah speeding past Trafalgar's heights.
+There was a whistling breeze from the west; and over the mountains
+of Tarifa and the far gloomy fastness of Ceuta hung clouds and
+squalls.  The sea, lashed to white flecks, raced through the
+straits, and every now and then a sharp shower darkened the face of
+the waters.  There was something forbidding and mysterious in the
+scene, something dark and foreboding over the coast-line of Africa.
+All eyes were fixed on the Rock, now slowly appearing from behind
+the hills that hide Algeciras.
+
+Luke was on duty on the bridge, motionless at his post.  It was a
+simple matter to these mariners to make for the anchorage of
+Gibraltar, and Luke was thinking of Agatha.  He was recalling a
+thousand little incidents which came back with a sudden warm thrill
+into his heart, the chilled, stern heart of a disappointed man.  He
+was recollecting words that she had said, silences which she had
+kept, glances which she had given him.  And all told him the same
+thing.  All went to the core of his passionate, self-consuming
+heart.
+
+The bay now lay before him, dotted here and there by close-reefed
+sails.  A few steamers lay at anchor, and, beyond the old Mole,
+black coal hulks peacefully stripped of rigging.  Suddenly Luke
+lifted the lid of the small box affixed to the rail in front of him
+and sought his glasses.  For some seconds he looked through the
+binoculars fixedly in the direction of the Mole.  Then he moved
+towards the captain.
+
+"That is the Kittiwake," he said.
+
+"Thought it looked like her!" replied the captain, intent on his own
+affairs.
+
+Luke went back to his post.  The Kittiwake!  And he was not glad.
+It was that that puzzled him.  He was not glad.  He was going to see
+Fitz after many years, and twins are different from other brothers.
+They usually see more of each other all through life.  They are
+necessary to each other.  Fitz and Luke had always corresponded as
+regularly as their roaming lives allowed.  But for three years they
+had never met.
+
+Luke stood with beating heart, his eyes fixed on the trim rakish-
+looking little gunboat lying at anchor immediately off the Mole.  He
+was suddenly breathless.  His light oil-skins oppressed him.  There
+was a vague feeling within him that he had only begun to live within
+the last two weeks--all before that had been merely existence.  And
+now he was living too quickly, without time to define his feelings.
+But the sensations were real enough.  It does not take long to
+acquire a feeling.
+
+After all he was not glad.  His attention was required for a few
+moments to carry out an order, and he returned to his thought.  He
+did not, however, think it out.  He only knew that if Agatha had not
+been on board the Croonah he would have been breathlessly impatient
+to see his brother.  Therefore he did not want Agatha and Fitz to
+meet.  And yet Fitz was quite different from other men.  There was
+no harm in Fitz, and surely he could be trusted to see Agatha for a
+few hours without falling in love with her, without making Agatha
+love him.
+
+Yet--Fitz had always succeeded where he, Luke, had failed.  Fitz had
+always the good things of life.  It was all luck.  It had been luck
+from the very beginning.  Another order required the second
+officer's full mind and attention.  There were a thousand matters to
+be attended to, for the Croonah was enormous, unwieldy.
+
+In the execution of his duties Luke began presently to forget
+himself.  He did not attempt to define his thoughts.  He did not
+even reflect that he knew so little of his brother that this meeting
+could not possibly cause him this sudden uneasiness, this foreboding
+care, from THAT side of the question.  He did not fear for Fitz to
+meet Agatha, he really dreaded Agatha seeing Fitz.
+
+The Croonah moved into her anchorage with that gentle strength which
+in a large steamer seems to indicate that she is thinking about it
+and doing it all herself.  For in these days there is no shouting,
+no call of boatswain's whistle; and the ordinary observer hardly
+notices the quiet deus ex machina, the man on the bridge.
+
+Hardly had the anchor splashed home with a rattle of cable that
+vibrated through the ship, when a small white boat shot out from
+behind the smart Kittiwake, impelled by the short and regular beat
+of ten oars.  There was a man seated in the stern enveloped in a
+large black boat cloak--for Gibraltar harbour is choppy when the
+westerly breezes blow--a man who looked the Croonah up and down with
+a curious searching eye.  The boat shot alongside the vast steamer--
+the bowman neatly catching a rope that was thrown to him--and the
+officer clambered up the swaying gangway.
+
+He pushed his way gently through the passengers, the cloak flying
+partially open as he did so and displaying Her Majesty's uniform.
+He treated all these people with that patient tolerance which
+belongs to the mariner when dealing with landsmen.  They were so
+many sheep penned up in a conveyance.  Well-dressed sheep, he
+admitted tacitly by the withdrawal of his dripping cloak from their
+contact, but he treated them in the bulk, failing to notice one more
+than another.  He utterly failed to observe Agatha Ingham-Baker,
+dainty and fresh in blue serge and a pert sailor hat.  She knew him
+at once, and his want of observation was set down in her mind
+against him.  She did not want him to recognise her.  Not at all.
+She merely wanted him to look at her, and then to look again--to
+throw a passing crumb of admiration to her greedy vanity, which
+lived on such daily food.
+
+Fitz, intent on his errand, pushed his way towards the steps leading
+up through the awning to the bridge.  He seemed to know by some
+sailor instinct where to find it.  He paused at the foot of the iron
+steps to give an order to the man who followed at his heel, and the
+attitude was Luke's.  The onlookers saw at a glance who this must
+be.  The resemblance was startling.  There was merely Luke FitzHenry
+over again, somewhat fairer, a little taller, but the same man.
+
+The captain gave a sudden bluff laugh when Fitz emerged on the
+little spidery bridge far above the deck.
+
+"No doubt who you are, sir," he said, holding out his hand.
+
+Then he stepped aside, and the two brothers met.  They said nothing,
+merely shaking hands, and Luke's eyes involuntarily went to the
+smart, simple uniform half hidden by the cloak.  Fitz saw the glance
+and drew his cloak hastily round him.  It was unfortunate.
+
+And this was their meeting after three years.
+
+"By George!" exclaimed Fitz, after a momentary pause, "she IS a fine
+ship!"
+
+Luke rested his hands on the white painted rail--almost a caress to
+the great steamer--and followed the direction of his brother's
+glance,
+
+"Yes," he admitted slowly, "yes, she is a good boat."
+
+And then his deep eyes wandered involuntarily towards the tiny
+Kittiwake--smart, man-of-war-like at her anchorage--and a sudden
+sharp sigh broke from his lips.  He had not got over it yet.  He
+never would.
+
+"So you have got away," he went on, "from Mahon at last?"
+
+"Yes," answered Fitz.
+
+"I should think you have had enough of Minorca to last you the rest
+of your life," said Luke, looking abruptly down at the quarrelling
+boatmen and the tangle of tossing craft beneath them.
+
+"It is not such a bad place as all that," replied Fitz.  "I--I
+rather like it."
+
+There was a little pause, and quite suddenly Luke said -
+
+"The Ingham-Bakers are on board."
+
+It would almost seem that these twin minds followed each other into
+the same train of thought.  Fitz frowned with an air of
+reflectiveness.
+
+"The Ingham-Bakers," he said.  "Who are they?"
+
+Luke gave a little laugh which almost expressed a sudden relief.
+
+"Don't you remember?" he said.  "She is a friend of Mrs.
+Harrington's, and--and there is Agatha, her daughter."
+
+"I remember--stout.  Not the daughter, the old woman, I mean.  Oh--
+yes.  Where are they going?"
+
+"To Malta."
+
+It was perfectly obvious, even to Luke, that the Ingham-Bakers'
+immediate or projective destination was a matter of the utmost
+indifference to Fitz, who was more interested in the Croonah than in
+her passengers.
+
+They were both conscious of an indefinite feeling of disappointment.
+This meeting after years of absence was not as it should be.
+Something seemed to stand between them--a shadow, a myth, a tiny
+distinction.  Luke, with characteristic pessimism, saw it first--
+felt its chill, intangible presence before his less subtle-minded
+brother.  Then Fitz saw it, and, as was his habit, he went at it
+unhesitatingly
+
+"Gad!" he explained, "I am glad to see you, old chap.  Long time,
+isn't it, since we saw each other?  You must come back with me, and
+have lunch or something.  The men will be awfully glad to make your
+acquaintance.  You can look over the ship, though she is not much to
+look at, you know!  Not up to this.  She is a fine ship, Luke!  What
+can she steam?"
+
+"She can do her twenty," answered the second officer of the Croonah,
+indifferently.
+
+"Yes, she looks it.  Well, can you get away now?"
+
+Luke shook his head.
+
+"No," he answered almost ungraciously, "I can't leave the ship."
+
+"What!  Not to come and look over the Kittiwake?"  Fitz's face fell
+visibly.  He did not seem to be able to realise that any one should
+be equal to relinquishing without a murmur the opportunity of
+looking over the Kittiwake.
+
+"No, I am afraid not.  We have our discipline too, you know.
+Besides, we are rather like railway guards.  We must keep up to
+time.  We shall be under way by two o'clock."
+
+Fitz pressed the point no further.  He had been brought up to
+discipline since childhood--moreover, he was rather clever in a
+simple way, and he had found out that it would be no pleasure but a
+pain to Luke to board a ship flying the white ensign.
+
+"Can I stay on board to lunch with you?" he asked easily.  "Goodness
+only knows when we shall run against each other again.  It was the
+merest chance.  We only got in last night.  I was just going ashore
+to report when we saw the old Croonah come pounding in.  That"--he
+paused and drew his cloak closer--"is why I am in my war-paint!  We
+are going straight home."
+
+"Stay by all means," said Luke.
+
+Fitz nodded.
+
+"I suppose," he added as an afterthought, "that I ought to pay my
+respects to Mrs. Ingham-Baker?"
+
+Luke's face cleared suddenly.  Fitz had evidently forgotten about
+Agatha.
+
+"I will ask them to lunch with us in my cabin," he said.
+
+And presently they left the bridge.
+
+In due course Fitz was presented to the Ingham-Bakers, and Agatha
+was very gracious.  Fitz looked at her a good deal.  Simply because
+she made him.  She directed all her conversation and eke her bright
+eyes in his direction.  He listened, and when necessary he laughed a
+jolly resounding laugh.  How could she tell that he was drawing
+comparisons all the while?  It is the simple-minded men who puzzle
+women most.  Whenever Luke's face clouded she swept away the
+gathering gloom with some small familiar attention--some reference
+to him in her conversation with Fitz which somehow brought him
+nearer and set Fitz further off.
+
+Suddenly, on hearing that Fitz hoped to be in England within a week,
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker fell heavily into conversation.
+
+"I am afraid," she said, "that you will find our dear Mrs.
+Harrington more difficult to get on with than ever.  In fact--he,
+he!--I almost feel inclined to advise you not to try.  But I suppose
+you will not be much in London?"
+
+Fitz looked at her with clear, keen blue eyes.
+
+"I expect to be there some time," he answered.  "I hope to stay with
+Mrs. Harrington."
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker glanced at Agatha, and returned somewhat hastily
+to her galantine of veal.
+
+Agatha was drumming on the table with her fingers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.  A SHUFFLE.
+
+     To love is good, no doubt, but you love best
+     A calm safe life, with wealth and ease and rest.
+
+The Croonah ran round Europa Point into fine weather, and the wise
+old captain--who felt the pulse of the saloon with unerring touch--
+deemed it expedient to pin upon the board the notice of a ball to be
+given on the following night.  There was considerable worldly
+knowledge in this proceeding.  The passengers still had the air of
+Europe in their lungs, the energy of Europe in their limbs.  Nothing
+pulls a ship full of people together so effectually as a ball.
+Nothing gives such absorbing employment to the female mind which
+would otherwise get into hopeless mischief.  Besides they had been
+at sea five days, and the captain knew that more than one ingenuous
+maiden, sitting in thoughtful idleness about the decks, was lost in
+vague forebodings as to the creases in her dresses ruthlessly packed
+away in the hold.
+
+The passengers were, in fact, finding their sea-legs, which, from
+the captain's point of view, meant that the inner men and the outer
+women would now require and receive a daily increasing attention.
+So he said a word to the head cook, and to the fourth officer he
+muttered -
+
+"Let the women have their trunks!"
+
+When, on the evening of the ball, Agatha appeared at the door of her
+mother's cabin, that good lady's face fell.
+
+"What, dear?  Your old black!"
+
+"Yes, dear, my old black," replied the dutiful daughter.  She was
+arranging a small bouquet of violets in the front of her dress--a
+bouquet she had found in her cabin when she went to dress.  Luke
+had, no doubt, sent ashore for them at Gibraltar--and there was
+something of the unknown, the vaguely possible, in his manner of
+placing them on her tiny dressing-table, without a word of
+explanation, which appealed to her jaded imagination.
+
+There was some suggestion of recklessness about Agatha, which her
+mother almost detected--something which had never been suggested in
+the subtler element of London drawing-room.  The girl spoke in a
+short, sharp way which was new to the much-snubbed rear-commander.
+Agatha still had this when Luke asked her for a dance.
+
+"Yes," she answered curtly, handing him the card and avoiding his
+eyes.
+
+He stepped back to take advantage of the light of a swinging
+hurricane lamp, and leant against the awning which had been closed
+in all round.
+
+"How many may I have?" he asked.
+
+She continued to look anywhere except in his direction.  Then quite
+suddenly she gave a little laugh.
+
+"All."
+
+"What?" he added, with a catch in his breath.
+
+"You may have them all."
+
+There was a pause; then Agatha turned with a half-mocking smile, and
+looked at him.  For the first time in her life she was really
+frightened.  She had never seen passion in a man's face before.  It
+was the one thing she had never encountered in the daily round of
+social effort in London.  Not an evil passion, but the strong
+passion of love, which is as rare in human beings as is genius.  He
+was standing in a conventional attitude, holding her programme--and
+that which took the girl's breath away lay in his eyes alone.
+
+She could not meet his look, for she felt suddenly quite puny and
+small and powerless.  She realised in that flash of thought that
+there was a whole side of life of which she had never suspected the
+existence.  After all, she was learning the lesson that millions of
+women have to learn before they quite realise what life is.
+
+She smiled nervously, and looked hard at the little card in his
+strong, still hands--wondering what she had done.  She saw him write
+his name opposite five or six dances.  Then he handed her the card,
+and left her with a grave bow--left her without a word of
+explanation, to take his silence and explain it if she could.  That
+sense of the unknown in him, which appealed so strongly to her,
+seemed to rise and envelop her in a maze of thought and imagination
+which was bewildering in its intensity--thrilling with a new life.
+
+When he came back later to claim his first dance, he was quietly
+polite, and nothing else.  They danced until the music stopped, and
+Agatha knew that she had met her match in this as in other matters.
+
+The dancers trooped out to the dimly-lighted deck, while the
+quartermaster raised the awning to allow the fresh air to circulate.
+Luke and Agatha went with the rest, her hand resting unsteadily on
+his sleeve.  She had never felt unsteady like this before.  She was
+conscious, probably for the first time in her life, of a strange,
+creeping fear.  She was distinctly afraid of the first words that
+her partner would say when they were alone.  Spread out over the
+broad deck the many passengers seemed but a few.  It was almost
+solitude--and Agatha was afraid of solitude with Luke.  Yet she had
+selected a dress which she knew would appeal to him.  She had
+dressed for him--which means something from a woman's point of view.
+She had welcomed this ball with a certain reckless throb of
+excitement, not for its own sake, but for Luke's.  The unerring
+instinct of her vanity had not played her false.  She had succeeded,
+and now she was afraid of her success.  There is a subtle fear in
+all success, and an indefinite responsibility.
+
+Luke knew the ship.  He led the way to a deserted corner of the
+deck, with a deliberation which set Agatha's heart beating.
+
+"What did you mean when you said I could have all the dances?" asked
+Luke slowly.  His eyes gleamed deeply as he looked down at her.  And
+Agatha had no answer ready.
+
+She stood before him with downcast eyes--like a chidden child who
+has been meddling with danger.
+
+And suddenly his arms were round her.  She gave a little gasp, but
+made no attempt to escape from him.  This was all so different, so
+new to her.  There was something in the strong salt air blowing over
+them which seemed to purify the world and raise them above the
+sordid cares thereof.  There was something simple and strong and
+primitive in this man--at home on his own element, all filled with
+the strength of the ocean--mastering her, claiming her as if by
+force.
+
+"What did you mean?" he asked again.
+
+She pushed him away, and turning stood beside him with her two hands
+resting on the rail, her back turned towards him.
+
+"Oh, Luke," she whispered at length, "I can't be poor--I CAN'T--I
+can't.  You do not know what it is.  It has always been such a
+struggle--there is no rest in it."
+
+It is said that women can raise men above the world.  How often do
+they bring them down to it when they are raising themselves!
+
+And Luke's love was large enough to accept her as she was.
+
+"And if I were not poor?" he asked, without any of the sullen pride
+that was his.
+
+She answered nothing, and he read her silence aright.
+
+"I will become rich," he said, "somehow.  I do not care how.  I
+will, I will--Agatha!"
+
+She did not dare to meet his eyes.
+
+"Come," she said.  "Come--let us go back."
+
+They danced together again, but Agatha refused to sit anywhere but
+beneath the awning.  While they were dancing they did not speak.  He
+never took his eyes off her, and she never looked at him.
+
+Then, just as he was, with a pilot jacket exchanged for his dress
+coat, Luke had to go on duty on the bridge.  While he stood there,
+far above the lighted decks, alone at his post in the dark, keen and
+watchful, still as a statue, the sound of the dance music rose up
+and enveloped him like the echo of a happy dream.
+
+Presently the music ceased, and the weary dancers went below,
+leaving Luke FitzHenry to his own thoughts.
+
+All the world seemed to be asleep except these two men--one
+motionless on the bridge, the other alert in the dimly lighted
+wheelhouse.  The Croonah herself seemed to slumber with the regular
+beating of a great restless heart far down in her iron being.
+
+The dawn was now creeping up into the eastern sky, touching the face
+of the waters with a soft, pearly light.  A few straight streaks of
+cloud became faintly outlined.  The moon looked yellow and
+deathlike.
+
+Luke stood watching the rise of a new day, and with it there seemed
+to be rising within him a new life.
+
+Beneath his feet, in her dainty cabin, Agatha Ingham-Baker saw that
+dawn also.  She was standing with her arms folded on the upper berth
+breast high.  She had been standing there an hour.  She was alone in
+the cabin, for Luke had secured separate rooms for the two ladies.
+
+Agatha had not moved since she came down from the ball.  She did not
+seem to be thinking of going to bed.  The large square port-hole was
+open, and the cool breeze fluttered the lace of her dress, stirring
+the dead violets at her breast.
+
+Her finely cut features were set with a look of strong
+determination.  "I can't--I can't be poor," she was repeating to
+herself with a mechanical monotony.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.  A CHOICE.
+
+     'Tis better far to love and be poor,
+     Than be rich with an empty heart.
+
+Mrs. Harrington was sitting in the great drawing-room in Grosvenor
+Gardens, alone.  The butler was fuming and cleaning plate in his
+pantry.  The maid was weeping in the workroom.  Mrs. Harrington had
+had a busy afternoon.
+
+"'Tis always thus when she's alone in the house," the cook had said,
+with a grandiosity of style borrowed from the Family Herald.  It is
+easy for the cook to be grandiose when the butler and the lady's-
+maid are in trouble.  Thus philosophy walketh in at the back door.
+
+Mrs. Harrington's sharp grey face twitched at times with a certain
+restlessness which was hers when she had no one at hand to bully.
+She could not concentrate her attention on the newspaper she held in
+her hands, and at intervals her eyes wandered over the room in
+search of something to find fault with.  She made the mistake common
+to persons under such circumstances--she forgot to look in the
+mirror.  Mrs. Harrington was tired of herself.  She wished someone
+would call.  At the same time she felt a cordial dislike to all her
+friends.
+
+It was a hopelessly grey afternoon early in December, and every one
+was out of London.  Mrs. Harrington had a certain circle of friends-
+-middle-aged or elderly women, rich like herself, lonely like
+herself--whom she despised.  They all rather disliked each other,
+these women, but they visited nevertheless.  They dined together
+seriously; keeping in mind the cook, and watchful over the wine.
+But the majority of these ladies had gone away for the winter.  The
+Riviera was created for such.
+
+Mrs. Harrington, however, never went abroad in the winter.  She said
+that she had travelled too much when she was younger--in the
+lifetime of her husband--to care about it now.  The Honourable
+George Henry Harrington had, in fact, lived abroad for financial
+reasons, and the name was not of sweet savour in the nostrils of
+hotel-keepers.  The married life referred to occasionally in cold
+tones by the Honourable Mrs. Harrington had been of that order which
+is curtly called "cat and dog," and likewise "hand to mouth."
+
+Therefore Mrs. Harrington avoided the Continent.  She could easily,
+of her affluence, have paid certain large debts which she knew to be
+outstanding, but she held a theory that dead men owe nothing.  And
+with this theory she lubricated an easy-going conscience.
+
+The mistress of the large house in Grosvenor Gardens was wondering
+discontentedly what she was going to do with herself until tea-time,
+when she heard the sound of a bell ringing far down in the basement.
+Despite the grand drawing-room, despite the rich rustle of her grey
+silk dress, this great lady peeped from behind the curtain, and saw
+a hansom cab.
+
+A few minutes later the door was thrown open by the angry butler.
+
+"Miss Challoner--Captain Bontnor."
+
+Eve came in, and at her heels Captain Bontnor, who sheered off as it
+were from the butler, and gave him a wide berth.
+
+Mrs. Harrington could be gracious when she liked.  She liked now,
+and she would have kissed her visitor had that young lady shown any
+desire for such an honour.  But there was a faint reflex of Spanish
+ceremony in Eve Challoner, of which she was probably unaware.  A few
+years ago it would not have been noticeable, but to-day we are hail-
+fellow-well-met even with ladies--which is a mistake, on the part of
+the ladies.
+
+"So you received my letter, my dear," said Mrs. Harrington.
+
+"Yes," replied Eve.  "This is my uncle--Captain Bontnor."
+
+Mrs. Harrington had the bad taste to raise her eyebrows
+infinitesimally, and Captain Bontnor saw it.
+
+"How do you do?" said Mrs. Harrington, with a stiff bow.
+
+"I am quite well, thank you, marm," replied the sailor, with more
+aplomb than Eve had yet seen him display.
+
+Without waiting to hear this satisfactory intelligence, Mrs.
+Harrington turned to Eve again.  She evidently intended to ignore
+Captain Bontnor systematically and completely.
+
+"You know," she said, "I am related to your father--"
+
+"By marriage," put in Captain Bontnor, with simple bluntness.  He
+was brushing his hat with a large pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"And I have pleasant recollections of his kindness in past years.  I
+stayed with him at the Casa d'Erraha more than once.  I was staying
+there when--well, some years ago.  I think you had better come and
+live with me until your poor father's affairs have been put in
+order."
+
+Captain Bontnor raised his head and ceased his operations on the
+dusty hat.  His keen old eyes, full of opposition, were fixed on
+Eve's face.  He was quite ready to be rude again, but women know how
+to avoid these shallow places better than men, with a policy which
+is not always expedient perhaps.
+
+"Thank you," replied Eve.  "Thank you very much, but my uncle has
+kindly offered me a home."
+
+Mrs. Harrington's grey face suggested a scorn which she apparently
+did not think it worth while to conceal from a person who wiped the
+inside of his hat with his pocket-handkerchief in a lady's presence.
+
+"But," she said coldly, "I should think that your uncle cannot fail
+to see the superior advantages of the offer I am now making you,
+from a social point of view, if from no other."
+
+"I do see them advantages, marm," said the captain bluntly.  He
+looked at Eve with something dog-like peering from beneath his
+shaggy eyebrows.
+
+"Of course," continued Mrs. Harrington, ignoring the confession,
+"you have been brought up as a lady, and are accustomed to
+refinement, and in some degree to luxury."
+
+"You needn't make it any plainer, marm," blurted out Captain
+Bontnor.  "I don't need you to tell me that my niece is above me.  I
+don't set up for bein' anything nor what I am.  There's not much of
+the gentleman about me.  But--"
+
+He paused, and half turned towards Eve.
+
+"But, 'cording to my lights, I'm seeking to do my duty towards the
+orphan child of my sister Amelia Ann."
+
+"Not overlooking the fact, I suppose, that the orphan child of your
+sister Amelia Ann has a very fair income of her own."
+
+Captain Bontnor smiled blandly, and smoothed his hat with his
+sleeve.
+
+"Not overlooking that fact, marm," he said, "if you choose to take
+it so."
+
+Mrs. Harrington turned to Eve again with a faint reflex of her
+overbearing manner towards the Ingham-Bakers and other persons who
+found it expedient to submit.
+
+"You will see at a glance," she said, "that it is impossible for you
+to live with Captain Bontnor."
+
+"I have already accepted his kind offer," returned the girl.  "Thank
+you, nevertheless."
+
+"But," said Mrs. Harrington, "that was before you knew that I was
+ready to make a home for you."
+
+Captain Bontnor had turned away.  He blew his nose so loudly that
+Mrs. Harrington frowned.  There was something trumpet-like and
+defiant in the sound.  Opposition had ever a strange effect on this
+spoilt woman.  She liked it, as serving to enhance the value of the
+wish which she rarely failed to gratify in the end.
+
+"You must remember your position," she continued.  "These are very
+democratic days, when silly people think that all men are equal.  A
+lady is nevertheless still a lady, and a gentleman a gentleman,
+though one does not often meet them.  I wish you to come and live
+with me."
+
+Eve's dark eyes flashed suddenly.  She glanced at her uncle, and
+said nothing.
+
+"A girl with money is a ready dupe to designing persons," added Mrs.
+Harrington.
+
+"I am saved that danger, for I have no money," replied Eve.
+
+"Nonsense, child!  I know the value of land in Mallorca.  I see
+already that you are being deceived."
+
+She glanced significantly towards the captain, who was again smiling
+blandly.
+
+"The matter has been fully gone into," explained Eve, "by competent
+persons.  The Val d'Erraha does not belong to me.  It was held by my
+father only on 'rotas'--the Minorcan form of lease--and it has now
+been returned to the proprietor."
+
+Mrs. Harrington's keen face dropped.  She prided herself upon being
+a woman of business, and as such had always taken a deep interest in
+the affairs of other people.  It is to be presumed that women have a
+larger mental grasp than men.  They crave for more business when
+they are business-like, and thus by easy steps descend to mere
+officiousness.
+
+Eve's story was so very simple and, to the ears of one who had known
+her father, so extremely likely, that Mrs. Harrington had for the
+moment nothing to say.  She knew the working of the singular system
+on which land is to this day held in tenure in Majorca and Minorca,
+and there was no reason to suppose that there was any mistake or
+deception respecting the estate of the Val d'Erraha.
+
+A dramatist of considerable talent, who is not sufficiently studied
+in these modern times, has said that a man in his time plays many
+parts.  He left it to be understood that a woman plays only one.
+The business woman is the business woman all through her life--she
+is never the charitable lady, even for a moment.
+
+Mrs. Harrington had wished to have the bringing out of a beautiful
+heiress.  She had no desire to support a penniless orphan.  The
+matter had, in her mind, taken the usual form of a contract in black
+and white.  Mrs. Harrington would supply position and a suitable
+home--Eve was to have paid for her own dresses--chosen by the elder
+contractor--and to have filled gracefully the gratifying, if hollow,
+position of a young person of means looking for a husband.
+
+Mrs. Harrington's business habits had, in fact, kept her fully alive
+to the advantages likely to accrue to herself; and the small fact
+that Eve was penniless reduced these advantages to a mythical reward
+in the hereafter.  And business people have not time to think of the
+hereafter.
+
+It is possible that simple old Captain Bontnor in part divined these
+thoughts in the set grey eyes, the grey wrinkled face.
+
+"You'll understand, marm," he said, "that my niece will not be in a
+position to live the sort o' life"--he paused, and looked round the
+vast room, quite without admiration--"the sort o' life you're livin'
+here.  She couldn't keep up the position."
+
+"It would not be for long," said Mrs. Harrington, already weighing
+an alternative plan.  She looked critically at Eve, noting, with the
+appraising eye of a middle-aged woman of the world, the grace of her
+straight young form, the unusual beauty of her face.  "If you could
+manage to allow her sufficient to dress suitably for one season, I
+dare say she would make a suitable marriage."
+
+Eve turned on her with a flash of bright dark eyes.  "Thank you; I
+do not want to make a suitable marriage."
+
+Captain Bontnor laid his hand on her arm.
+
+"My dear," he said, "don't take any heed of her.  She doesn't know
+any better.  I have heard tell of such women, but"--he looked round
+the room--"I did not look to meet with one in a house like this.  I
+did not know they called themselves ladies."
+
+Mrs. Harrington gasped.  She lived in a world where people think
+such things as these, but do not say them.  Captain Bontnor, on the
+other hand, had not yet encountered a person of whom he was so much
+afraid as to conceal a hostile opinion, should he harbour such.
+
+He was patting Eve's gloved hand as if she had been physically hurt,
+and Eve smiled down into his sympathetic old face.  It is a singular
+fact that utter worldliness in a woman seems to hurt women less than
+it does men.
+
+Mrs. Harrington, with frigid dignity, ignored Captain Bontnor, and
+addressed herself exclusively to Eve.
+
+"You must be good enough to remember," she said, "that I can
+scarcely have other motives than those of kindness."
+
+A woman is so conscious of the weak links in her chain of argument,
+that she usually examines them publicly.
+
+"I do remember that," replied Eve, rather softened by the grey
+loneliness of this woman's life--a loneliness which seemed to be
+sitting on all the empty chairs--"and I am very grateful to you.  I
+think, perhaps, my uncle misunderstood you.  But--"
+
+"Yes--but--"
+
+"Under the circumstances, I think it will be wiser for me to accept
+his kind offer, and make my home with him.  I hope to be able to
+find some work which will enable me to--to help somewhat towards the
+household expenses."
+
+Mrs. Harrington shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"As you like," she said.  "After a few months of a governess's life
+perhaps you may reconsider your decision.  I know--"
+
+She was going to say that she knew what it was, but she recollected
+herself in time.
+
+"I know," she said instead, "girls who have lived such lives."
+
+With the air of Spain Eve Challoner seemed to have inhaled some of
+the Spanish pride, which is as a stone wall against which charity
+and pity may alike beat in vain.  From her superior height the girl
+looked down on the keen-faced little woman.
+
+"I am not in a position to choose," she said.  "I am prepared for
+some small hardships."
+
+Mrs. Harrington turned to ring the bell.  With the sudden caprice
+which her money had enabled her to cultivate, she had taken a liking
+to Eve.
+
+"You will have some tea?" she said.
+
+Eve turned to thank her, and suddenly her heart leaped to her
+throat.  She caught her breath, and did not answer for a moment.
+
+"Thank you," she said; and her eyes stole back to the mantelpiece,
+where a large photograph of Fitz seemed to watch her with a quiet,
+thoughtful smile.
+
+The whole room appeared to be different after that.  Mrs. Harrington
+seemed to be a different woman--the world seemed suddenly to be a
+smaller place and less lonely.
+
+During the remainder of the short visit they talked of indifferent
+topics, while Captain Bontnor remained silent.  Mrs. Harrington's
+caprice grew stronger, and before tea was over she said -
+
+"My dear, if you will not come and live with me, at all events make
+use of me.  Your uncle will, no doubt, have to make some small
+changes in his household.  I propose that you stay with me a week or
+ten days, until he is ready for you."
+
+This with a slight conciliatory bow towards Captain Bontnor, who
+stared remorselessly at the clock.
+
+"Thank you; I should very much like to," said Eve, mindful of the
+mantelpiece.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.  A QUATRE.
+
+     There is so much that no one knows,
+     So much unreached that none suppose.
+
+"I want you to put on a nice dress to-night.  I have two friends
+coming to dine."
+
+Eve looked up from the book she was reading, and Mrs. Harrington
+tempered her curt manner of expressing her wishes with a rare smile.
+She often did this for Eve's benefit, almost unconsciously.  In some
+indefinite way she was rather afraid of this girl.
+
+"I will do my best," answered Eve, her mind only half weaned from
+the pages.
+
+She had been ten days in the house, and the somewhat luxurious
+comfort of it appealed to a faintly developed love of peace and ease
+which had been filtered into her soul with the air of a Southern
+land.  She had found it easier to get on with Mrs. Harrington than
+she at first anticipated.  Her nature, which was essentially
+womanly, had in reality long craved for the intimate sympathy and
+intercourse which only another woman could supply.  There was
+something indolent and restful in the very atmosphere of the house
+that supplied a distinct want in the motherless girl's life.  There
+were a number of vague possibilities of trouble in the world, half
+perceived, half divined by Eve; which possibilities Mrs. Harrington
+seemed capable of meeting and fending off.
+
+It was all indefinite and misty, but Eve felt at rest, and, as it
+were, under protection, in the house of this hard, cold woman of the
+world.
+
+"It can only be a black one," the girl answered.
+
+"Yes; but people don't know what a black dress is until they have
+seen one that has been made in Spain."
+
+Eve did not return at once to her book.  She was, in fact, thinking
+about her dress--being in no way superior to such matters.
+
+When she came down into the drawing-room, an hour later, she found
+awaiting her there the two men about whom she thought most.
+
+Cipriani de Lloseta and Fitz were standing on the hearthrug
+together.  Mrs. Harrington had not yet come down.  They came forward
+together, the Count taking her hand first, with his courteous bow.
+Fitz followed, shaking hands in silence, with that simplicity which
+she had learned to look for and to like in him.
+
+"I wonder," said Eve, "why Mrs. Harrington did not tell me that you
+were the two friends she expected to dinner?"
+
+The Count smiled darkly.
+
+"Perhaps our hostess does not know that we have met before--" he
+began; and stopped suddenly when the door opened, and the rustle of
+Mrs. Harrington's silk dress heralded her coming.
+
+Her quick eyes flashed over them with a comprehensive appreciation
+of the situation.
+
+"You all seem to know each other," she said sharply.  "I knew that
+Fitz had been of some service to you at D'Erraha; but I was not
+aware that you knew the Count de Lloseta."
+
+"The Count de Lloseta was very kind to me at Barcelona--on a matter
+of business," explained Eve innocently.
+
+Mrs. Harrington turned upon the Spaniard quickly, but nevertheless
+too late to catch the warning frown which he had directed towards
+Eve.  Mrs. Harrington looked keenly into his face, which was blandly
+imperturbable.
+
+"Then you are the owner of D'Erraha?"
+
+"I am."
+
+Mrs. Harrington gave a strange little laugh.
+
+"What a rich man you are!" she said.  "Come!  Let us go to dinner."
+
+She took the Count's arm, and led the way to the dining-room.  She
+was visibly absent-minded at first, as if pondering over something
+which had come as a surprise to her.  Then she woke from her
+reverie, and, turning to Fitz, said -
+
+"And what do you think of the Baleares?"
+
+"I like them," returned Fitz curtly.
+
+He thought it was bad taste thus to turn the conversation upon a
+subject which could only be painful to Eve.  He only thought of Eve,
+and therefore did not notice the patient endurance of the Count's
+face.
+
+De Lloseta was taking his soup with a slow concentration of his
+attention upon its flavour, as if trying not to hear the
+conversation.  Mrs. Harrington looked sharply at him, and in doing
+so failed to intercept a glance, exchanged by Fitz and Eve across
+the table.
+
+"Why are you here?" Fitz seemed to be asking.
+
+And Eve reassured him by a little smile.
+
+"There is one advantage in your long exile at Mahon," pursued the
+hostess inexorably.  "It must have been economical.  You could not
+have wanted money there."
+
+Fitz laughed.
+
+"Hardly so Arcadian as that," he said.
+
+The Count looked up.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "that the port where one does not want money
+is yet to be discovered?"
+
+Mrs. Harrington, sipping her sherry, glanced at the speaker.
+
+"Surely," she said lightly, "you are talking of what you know
+absolutely nothing."
+
+"Pardon me"--without looking up.
+
+Mrs. Harrington laughed.
+
+"Ah," she said, "we three know too much about you to believe that.
+Now, what can a lone man like you want with money?"
+
+"A lone man may happen to be saddled with a name of--well, of some
+repute--an expensive luxury."
+
+"And you think that a great name is worth spending a fortune upon,
+like a garden, merely to keep it up?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"You think it worth all that?"
+
+The dark, inscrutable eyes were raised deliberately to her face.
+
+"Assuredly you must know that I do," he said.
+
+Mrs. Harrington laughed, and changed the subject.  She knew this
+man's face well, and her knowledge told her that he was at the end
+of his patience.
+
+"So you saw Luke at Gibraltar?" she said, turning to Fitz.
+
+"Yes, for a short time.  I had never seen the Croonah before.  She
+is a fine ship."
+
+"So I understand.  So fine, indeed, that two friends of mine, the
+Ingham-Bakers, were induced to go to Malta in her.  There is no
+limit now to feminine enterprise.  Mothers are wonderful, and their
+daughters no less so.  N'est-ce pas, Senor?"
+
+"All ladies are wonderful!" said the Count, with a grave bow.  "They
+are as the good God made them."
+
+"I don't agree with you there," snapped Mrs. Harrington.  "So you
+saw the Ingham-Bakers also, Fitz?"
+
+"Yes; they lunched with us."
+
+"And Agatha was very pleasant, no doubt?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"She always is--to men.  The Count admires her greatly.  She makes
+him do so."
+
+"She has an easy task," put in De Lloseta quietly.  It almost seemed
+that there was some feeling about Agatha between these two people.
+
+"You know," Mrs. Harrington went on, addressing herself to Fitz,
+"that Luke and I have made it up.  We are friends now."
+
+Fitz did not answer at once.  His face clouded over.  Seen thus in
+anger, it was almost a hard face, older and somewhat worn.  He
+raised his eyes, and they as suddenly softened, for Eve's eyes had
+met them, and she seemed to understand.
+
+"I am not inclined to discuss Luke," he said quietly.
+
+"My dear, I did not propose doing so," answered Mrs. Harrington, and
+her voice was so humble and conciliatory that De Lloseta looked up
+from his plate, from one face to the other.
+
+That Mrs. Harrington should accept this reproof thus humbly seemed
+to come as a surprise to them all, except Fitz, who went on eating
+his dinner with a singular composure.
+
+It would appear that Mrs. Harrington had been put out of temper by
+some small incident at the beginning of the dinner, and, like a
+spoilt child, proceeded to vent her displeasure on all and sundry.
+In the same way she would no doubt have continued, unless spoken
+sharply to, as Fitz had spoken.
+
+For now her manner quite changed, and the rest of the meal passed
+pleasantly enough.  Mrs. Harrington now devoted herself to her
+guests, and as carefully avoided dangerous subjects as she had
+hitherto appeared to seek them.
+
+After dinner she asked the Count to tune his violin, while she
+herself prepared to play his accompaniment.
+
+Fitz lighted the candles and set the music ready with a certain
+neatness of hand rarely acquired by landsmen, and then returned to
+the smaller drawing-room, where Eve was seated by the fire,
+needlework in hand.
+
+He stood for a moment leaning against the mantelpiece.  Perhaps he
+was waiting for her to speak.  Perhaps he did not realise how much
+there was in his long, silent gaze.
+
+"How long have you been here?" he asked, when the music began.
+
+"Ten days," she answered, without looking up.
+
+"But you are not going to live here?"--with some misgiving.
+
+"Oh no.  I am going to live with my uncle in Suffolk."
+
+He moved away a few steps to pick up a fallen newspaper.  Presently
+he came back to her, resuming his former position at the corner of
+the mantelpiece.
+
+It was Eve who spoke next--smoothing out her silken trifle of
+needlework and looking at it critically.
+
+"I never thanked you," she said, "for all your kindness to me at
+D'Erraha.  You were a friend in need."
+
+It was quite different from what it had been at D'Erraha.  Possibly
+it was as different as were the atmospheres of the two places.  Eve
+seemed to have something of London in the reserve of her manner--the
+easy insincerity of her speech.  She was no longer a girl untainted
+by worldliness--sincere, frank, and open.
+
+Fitz was rather taken aback.
+
+"Oh," he answered, "I could not do much.  There was really nothing
+that I could do except to stand by in case I might be wanted."
+
+Eve took up her needle again.
+
+"But," she said, "that is already something.  It is often a great
+comfort, especially to women, to know that there is some one
+'standing by,' as you call it, in case they are wanted."
+
+She gave a little laugh, and then suddenly became quite grave.  The
+recollection of a conversation they had had at D'Erraha had flashed
+across her memory, as recollections do--at the wrong time.  The
+conversation she remembered was recorded at the time--it was almost
+word for word with this, but quite different.
+
+Fitz was looking at her with his impenetrable simplicity.
+
+"Will you oblige me," he said, "by continuing to look upon me in
+that light?"
+
+She had bent her head rather far over her work as he spoke, and as
+he said the last five words her breath seemed to come with a little
+catch, as if she had pricked her finger.
+
+The musicians were just finishing a brilliant performance, and
+before answering Fitz she looked round into the other room, nodded,
+smiled, and thanked them.  Then she turned to him, still speaking in
+the light and rather indifferent tone which was so new to him, and
+said -
+
+"Thank you very much, but of course I have my uncle.  How--how long
+will you be--staying on shore?  You deserve a long leave, do you
+not?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose I do," said Fitz absently.  He had evidently
+listened more to the voice than the words.  He forgot to answer the
+question.  But she repeated it.
+
+"How long do you get?" she asked, hopelessly conversational.
+
+"About three weeks."
+
+"Is that all?  Ah! here is tea.  I wonder whether I ought to offer
+to pour it out!"
+
+But Mrs. Harrington left the piano, and said that her sight was
+failing her.  She had had enough music.
+
+During the rest of the evening Fitz took one or two opportunities of
+looking at Eve to discover, if he could, what the difference was
+that he found in her.  He had left a girl in Majorca--he found a
+woman in London.  That was the whole difference; but he did not
+succeed in reducing it to so many words.  He had passed most of his
+life at sea among men.  He had not, therefore, had much opportunity
+of acquiring that doubtful knowledge--the knowledge of women--the
+only item, by the way, which men will never include among the
+sciences of existence.  Already they know more about the stars than
+they do about women.  Even if Fitz had possessed this knowledge he
+would not have turned it to account.  The wisest fail to do that.
+We only make use of our knowledge of women in the study of those
+women with whom other men have to do.
+
+"Fitz has grown rather dull and stupid," said Mrs. Harrington, when
+the two guests had taken their leave.
+
+Eve was folding up her work, and did not answer.
+
+"Was he like that in Mallorca?" continued the grey lady.
+
+"Oh--I think so.  He was very quiet always."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.  DON QUIXOTE.
+
+     They also serve who only stand and wait.
+
+"Come down to my club and have a cigar!"
+
+The Count stood under a yellow lamp enveloped in his fur-lined coat,
+looking with heavy, deep-browed eyes at his young companion.
+
+Fitz paused.  The Count had been kind to Eve.  Fitz had noticed his
+manner towards the girl.  He liked Cipriani de Lloseta--as many did-
+-without knowing why.
+
+"Thanks," he said, "I should like to."
+
+The Count's club was a small and a very select one.  It was a club
+with a literary tendency.  The porter who took charge of their coats
+had the air of a person who read the heavier monthly reviews.  He
+looked upon Fitz, as a man of outdoor tastes, with some misgiving.
+
+The Count led the way up to the luxurious silent smoking-room, where
+a few foreign novels and a host of newspapers littered the tables.
+
+As they entered the room a man looked up from his paper with some
+interest.  He was a peculiar-looking man, with a keen face, streaked
+by suffering--a face that was always ready to wince.  This man was a
+humorist, but he looked as if his own life had been a tragedy.  He
+continued to look at De Lloseta and Fitz with a quiet scrutiny which
+was somewhat remarkable.  It suggested the scrutiny of a woman who
+is taking notes of another's dress.
+
+More particularly perhaps he watched the Count, and the keen eyes
+had a reflective look, as if they were handing that which they saw,
+back to the brain behind them for purpose of storage.
+
+The Count met his eyes and nodded gravely.  With a little nod and a
+sudden pleasant smile the other returned to the perusal of his
+evening paper.
+
+Cipriani de Lloseta drew forward a deep chair, and with a courteous
+gesture invited Fitz to be seated.  He took a similar chair himself,
+and then leant forward, cigar-case in hand.
+
+"You know Mallorca," he said.
+
+Fitz took a cigar.
+
+"Yes," he answered, turning and looking into the Count's face with a
+certain honest interest.  He was thinking of what Eve had said about
+this man.  "Yes--I know Mallorca."
+
+The Count struck a match and lighted his cigar with the air of a
+connoisseur.
+
+"I am always glad," he said conversationally, "to meet any one who
+knows Mallorca.  It--was my home.  Perhaps you knew?"
+
+And through the blue smoke the quick dark eyes flashed a glance.
+
+"I saw your name--on the map," returned Fitz.
+
+The Count gave a little Spanish deprecatory nod and wave of the
+hand, indicating that it was no fault of his that an historical name
+should have attached itself to him.
+
+"Do you take whisky--and soda?" inquired the Count.
+
+"Thanks."
+
+De Lloseta called the waiter and gave the order with a slight touch
+of imperiousness which was one of the few attributes that stamped
+him as a Spaniard.  The feudal taint was still running in his veins.
+
+"Tell me," he went on, turning to Fitz again, "what you know of the
+island--what parts of it--and what you did there."
+
+In some ways Fitz was rather a simple person.
+
+"Oh!" he answered unconsciously.  "I went to D'Erraha mostly.  I
+used to sail across from Ciudadela to Soller--along the coast, you
+know."
+
+"And from Soller?"
+
+"From Soller I rode by the Valdemosa road, and then across the
+mountain and through that narrow valley up to the Val d'Erraha."
+
+The Count was smoking thoughtfully.
+
+"And you were happy there?" he said.
+
+Fitz looked pensively into his long tumbler.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I also," said the Count.  Then he seemed to remember his duties as
+host.  "Is that cigar all right?" he asked.
+
+"I think it is the best I have ever smoked," replied Fitz quietly;
+and the Count smiled.
+
+The two men sat there in a long silence--each thinking his own
+thoughts.  They were just the sort of men to do it.  No other but
+Cipriani de Lloseta would have sat with that perfect composure,
+wrapt in an impenetrable Spanish silence, providing with grave
+dignity such a very poor evening's entertainment.  And Fitz seemed
+quite content.  He leant back, gravely smoking the good cigar.
+There seemed to be some point of complete sympathy between them--
+possibly the little sunlit island of the Mediterranean where they
+had both been happy.
+
+The poem of a man's life is very deeply hidden, and civilisation is
+the covert.  The immediate outcome of civilisation is reserve and--
+nous voila.  Are we not increasing our educational facilities with a
+blind insistence day by day?  One wonders what three generations of
+cheap education will do for the world.  Already a middle-aged man
+can note the slackening of the human tie.  Railway directors, and
+other persons whose pockets benefit by the advance of civilisation,
+talk a vast deal of rubbish about bringing together the peoples of
+the world.  You can connect them, but you cannot bring them
+together.  Moreover, a connection is sometimes a point of
+divergence.  In human affairs it is more often so than otherwise.
+
+True, a generation lay between these two men, but it was not that
+that tied their tongues.  It was partially the fact that Cipriani de
+Lloseta had moved with the times--had learnt, perhaps, too well, to
+acquire that reserve which is daily becoming more noticeable among
+men.
+
+Nevertheless, it was he who spoke first.
+
+"I asked you to come and smoke a cigar with me for a purpose," he
+said.
+
+Fitz nodded.
+
+"Yes," he answered; "I thought so."
+
+A shadowy smile acknowledged this simple statement of a simple fact.
+The Count leant forward on his seat, resting his somewhat hollow
+cheek on his hand and his elbow on the arm of his chair.
+
+"Some years ago," he said, "before you were born, I passed through
+a--well, a bad time.  One of those times, I take it, when a man
+finds out the difference between a friend and an acquaintance.  The
+circumstances would not interest you.  They are essentially
+personal.  Some men, and many women--I am not cynical, that is the
+last resource of one who has himself to blame, I am merely stating a
+fact--many women turned their backs upon me.  There was, however,
+one man--an Englishman--who held to me with that unflinching courage
+of his own opinion which makes an Englishman what he is.  I accepted
+nothing from him at the time.  In fact, he could do nothing for me.
+I think he understood.  An Englishman and a Spaniard have much in
+common.  He is dead now.  It was Challoner."
+
+Fitz nodded.  The Count changed his position slightly.
+
+"I want you to use what influence you have with Miss Challoner.  She
+is proud."
+
+Fitz made no attempt to disclaim the implied influence.
+
+"Yes," he said; "I know."
+
+And he looked at the end of his cigar with a deep interest.  The man
+who loves a proud woman loves her pride.  He is also a happy man,
+because her pride will kill her vanity, and it is a woman's vanity
+that spoils a husband's love.
+
+"It would be a great satisfaction to me," the Count went on, "to pay
+off in some small degree the debt of gratitude which I never even
+acknowledged to Challoner.  Eve"--he paused, and repeated the name
+with a certain sense of enjoyment--"Eve is not fully equipped with
+worldly wisdom.  Thank God, for I hate a worldly-wise woman.  She is
+hardly old enough or--plain enough to fight her own battles."
+
+Fitz gave a sudden, sharp sigh, which made the Count pause for a
+moment.
+
+"You also have received kindness from Challoner," went on the elder
+man, after a short silence.
+
+Fitz nodded comprehensively.
+
+"And, like myself," the Count continued, rather quickly, "you are
+naturally interested in his daughter, and sorry for her in her great
+change of circumstances.  Now, it has occurred to me that together
+we might do something towards helping her.  You know her better than
+I do.  I only know that she is proud."
+
+"Very much to her credit," put in Fitz, looking fixedly at his own
+boots.
+
+"Entirely so.  And I respect her for it.  Unfortunately, assistance
+could hardly come from you--a young man.  Whereas, I might be her
+grandfather."
+
+He looked up with a smile--keen, black-haired, lithe of frame--a
+young man in appearance.
+
+"We might help each other," he added, "you and I, quite alone.
+Captain Bontnor is a very worthy old fellow, but--" and he shrugged
+his shoulders.  "We cannot leave her to the wayward charity of a
+capricious woman!" he added, with sudden bluntness.
+
+He looked rather wonderingly at Fitz, who did not respond to this
+suggestion, as he had expected him to do.  The coalition seemed so
+natural and so eminently practical, and yet the sailor sat coldly
+listening to each proposition as it fell from his companion's lips,
+weighing it, sifting it with a judicial, indifferent apathy.
+
+The Count de Lloseta threw himself back in his chair, and awaited,
+with all the gravity of his race, the pleasure of his companion.  At
+length Fitz spoke, rather deliberately.
+
+"I think," he said, "you mistake the footing upon which I stand with
+respect to Miss Challoner.  I shall be most happy to do all in my
+power; but I tell you frankly that it does not amount to much.  I am
+indebted to her indirectly for some very pleasant visits to
+D'Erraha; her father was very kind to me.  Hardly sufficient to
+warrant anything that would look like interference on my part."
+
+The Count was too discreet a man to press the point any further.
+
+"All this unfortunate difficulty would have been easily averted had
+I been less stupid.  I shall never cease to regret it."
+
+He spoke conversationally, flicking the end of his cigar neatly into
+the fire, and without looking at Fitz.
+
+"I never foresaw the natural tendency of lawyers to complicate the
+affairs of life.  My man in Palma was unfortunately zealous."
+
+Fitz nodded.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I was there."
+
+Cipriani de Lloseta glanced at him sharply.
+
+"I am glad of that," he said.  "It was very stupid of me.  I ought
+to have telegraphed to him to hold his tongue."
+
+"But Miss Challoner could not have accepted the Val d'Erraha as a
+present?"
+
+"Oh yes, she could, if she had not known.  These little things are
+only a matter of sentiment."
+
+Fitz leant forward, looking into the Count's face without attempting
+to conceal his surprise.
+
+"Do you mean to say you would have given it to her?" he asked.
+
+"No; I should have paid it to her in settlement of a debt which I
+owed to her father."
+
+The Count moved rather uneasily in his chair.  His eyes fell before
+his companion's steady gaze.
+
+"Another matter of sentiment," suggested Fitz.
+
+De Lloseta shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"If you will."
+
+They lapsed into silence again.  The Count was puzzled by Fitz, as
+Fitz in his turn had been puzzled earlier in the evening by Eve.  It
+was merely the old story of woman the incomprehensible, and man the
+superior--the lord of the universe--puzzled, completely mystified,
+made supremely miserable or quite happy by her caprice of a moment.
+
+It was a small thing that stood between these two men, preventing
+them from frankly co-operating in the scheme which both had at
+heart.  It was nothing but the tone of a girl's voice, the studied
+silence of a girl's eyes, which had once been eloquent.
+
+It was getting late.  A discreet clock on the mantelpiece declared
+the hour of midnight in deliberate cathedral chime.  Fitz looked up,
+but he did not move.  He liked Cipriani de Lloseta.  He had been
+prepared to do so, and now he had gone further than he had intended.
+He wanted him to go on talking about Eve, for he thirsted in his
+dumbly enduring way for more details of her life.  But he would not
+revert to the subject.  Rather than that he would go on enduring.
+
+While they were sitting thus in silence, the only other occupant of
+the room--the man with the pain-drawn face--rose from his seat,
+helping his legs with unsteady hands upon either arm of the chair.
+He threw the paper down carelessly on the table, and came across the
+room towards the Count de Lloseta.  He was a surprisingly tall man
+when he stood up; for in his chair he seemed to sink into himself.
+His hair was grey--rather long and straggly--his eyes hazel, looking
+through spectacles wildly.  His cheeks were very hollow, his chin
+square and bony.  Here was a man of keen nerves and quick to suffer.
+
+"Well," he said to Lloseta, "I haven't seen you for some time."
+
+"I've been away."
+
+The tall man looked down at him with the singular scrutiny already
+mentioned.
+
+"Spain?"
+
+"Spain."
+
+He turned away with a little nod, but stopped before he had gone
+many paces.
+
+"And when are you going to write those sketches of Spanish life?" he
+asked, with a cheery society laugh, which sounded rather
+incongruous.  "Never, I suppose.  Well, the loss is mine.  Good-
+night, Lloseta."
+
+He went away without looking back.
+
+"Do you know who that is?" the Count asked Fitz when the door was
+closed.
+
+Fitz had risen, with his eye on the clock.
+
+"No.  But I seem to know his face."
+
+The Count looked up with a smile.
+
+"You ought to.  That was John Craik."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.  BROKEN.
+
+                                The Powers
+     Behind the world that make our griefs our gains.
+
+The small town of Somarsh, in Suffolk, consists of one street
+running up from the so-called harbour.  At one end is the railway-
+station; at the other the harbour and the sea, and that is Somarsh.
+There are records that in days gone by--in the days of east coast
+prosperity--there was a Mayor of Somarsh, or Southmarsh, as it was
+then written.  But Ichabod!
+
+All Somarsh was in the street one morning after Fitz had gone to sea
+again, and those of the women who were not talking loudly were
+weeping softly.  The boats were not in yet, but the weather was
+fine, and the still, saffron sea was dotted with brown sails.  There
+was nothing wrong with the boats.
+
+No; the trouble was on shore, as it mostly is.  It came not from the
+sea, but from men.  It was pinned upon the door of Merton's Bank in
+the High Street.  Its form was unintelligible, for the wording of
+the notice was mostly outside the Suffolk vocabulary.  There was
+something written in a clerkly hand about the withdrawal of
+"financial facilities necessitating a stoppage of payment pending
+reconstruction."
+
+But the people in the street were saying that Merton's was "broke."
+The constable said so, and he was a recognised authority on matters
+pertaining to dry land and the law.  The door was locked on the
+inside, the shutters were up, the blinds down, as if mourning the
+death of a good East county credit.
+
+"And them a drivin' behind their two horses," said one old weather-
+beaten fisherman, who was suspected of voting on the wrong side at
+electioneering time.
+
+Some shook their heads, but the word went no farther, for the man
+who does his business on the great waters has a vast respect for
+ancient institutions.  And Merton's had been a good bank for many
+generations.
+
+"P'raps," said an old woman who had nothing to lose--for the sea had
+even kept her corpses from her--"p'raps what they say 'bout
+reconstruction may be all right.  But here comes the capt'n."
+
+The crowd turned like one man and watched the advent of Captain
+Bontnor.
+
+The old man was dressed in his best pilot cloth suit.  He had worn
+it quite recklessly for the last month, ever since Eve had come to
+live with him.  He had been interrupted in his morning walk--his
+quarter-deck tramp--forty times the length of his own railing in
+front of Malabar Cottage.  The postman bringing letters for Eve, had
+told him that there was trouble down in the town, and that he would
+likely be wanted.
+
+When he saw where the crowd was stationed he caught his breath.
+
+"No," he said aloud to himself, "no, it can't be Merton's."
+
+And when he joined the townspeople they saw that his sunburnt,
+rugged face was grey as ashes.
+
+"Mates," he said, "what is it?"
+
+"Merton's is broke--Merton's is broke!" they answered, clearing a
+way for him to read the notice for himself.  In Somarsh Captain
+Bontnor was considered quite a scholar.  As such he might, perhaps,
+have deciphered the clerkly handwriting in a shorter time than he
+now required, but on the east coast a reputation is not easily
+shaken.
+
+They waited for the verdict in silence.  After five minutes he
+turned round and his face gave some of them a shock.  His kindly
+blue eyes had a painfully puzzled, incompetent look, which had often
+come across them in Barcelona and in London.  But in Somarsh only
+Eve was familiar with it.
+
+"Yes, mates," he said, falling back into his old seafaring
+vernacular, forgetful of his best suit, "yes, shipmates, as far as I
+rightly understand it, the bank's broken.  And--and there's some of
+us that's ruined men."
+
+He stood for a moment looking straight in front of him--looking very
+old and not quite fit for life's battle.  Then he moved away.
+
+"I'll just go and tell my niece," he said.
+
+They watched him stump away--sturdy, unbroken, upright--still a man.
+
+"It's a hard end to a hard life," said the old woman who had
+suggested hope; and being only human, they fell to discussing the
+event from the point at which it affected their own lives.
+
+Malabar Cottage stood at the top end of the High Street--almost by
+itself--looking out over the little green plot of common land, where
+the coastguard flagpost stands towards the sea.  It was a low-
+roofed, solidly built cottage--once a coastguard station, but
+superseded in the heyday of east coast smuggling by a larger station
+further up the hill.  There was a little garden in front, which the
+captain kept himself, growing such old-fashioned flowers as were
+content with his ignorant handling.  The white jasmine ran riot over
+the portico.
+
+Eve had apparently received a letter of some importance, for she was
+standing at the gate waiting for him.  She ran out hatless to see
+him on his quarter-deck, and to her surprise found him not.  She
+soon saw him coming, however, and to beguile the time fell to
+reading her letter a second time, with a little frown, as if the
+caligraphy gave her trouble.
+
+She did not look up until he was quite close.
+
+"Uncle," she cried, "what is the matter?"
+
+He gave a smile, which was painfully out of place on his bluff
+features--it was wan and twisted.
+
+"Nothing, my dearie; nothing."
+
+He fumbled at the gate, and she had to find the latch for him.
+
+"Just come below--I mean indoors, my dear.  I've had some news.  I
+dare say it will be all right--but just at first, you understand, it
+is a little--keen."
+
+He bustled through the porch, and Eve followed him.  She watched him
+hang up his old straw hat, standing on tiptoe with a grunt, as was
+his wont.
+
+"I must unship that peg and put it a bit lower," he said, as he had
+said a hundred times before.
+
+Then he went into the little dining-room and sat somewhat heavily
+down, with his two hands resting on his knees.  He looked puzzled.
+
+"Truth is, my dear," he said breathlessly, "I don't seem to take to
+this long-shore life.  I--I rather think of going back to sea.
+There's plenty will give me a ship.  And I want you to keep this
+cottage nice for me, dearie, against my coming home."
+
+He paused, looking round the room with a poor simulation of interest
+at the quaint ornaments and curiosities which he had brought home
+from different parts of the world.  He looked at the ceiling and the
+carpet--anywhere, in fact, except at Eve.  Then he pushed his
+fingers through his thick grey hair, making it stand on end in a
+ludicrous manner.
+
+"I've got all my bits of things collected here--just bits of things-
+-oh, dear!--oh, dear--Eve, my child, I wonder why the Almighty's
+gone and done this?"
+
+Eve was already sitting on the arm of his chair, stroking back his
+hair with her tender fingers.
+
+"What is it, uncle?" she asked.  "Tell me."
+
+"Merton's," he answered.  "Merton's, and them so safe!"
+
+"Is it only money?" cried Eve.  "Is that all?"
+
+"Yes," he answered rather wearily, "that's all.  But it's money
+that's took me fifty-five years to make."
+
+"And had you it all in Merton's Bank?"
+
+"Yes, dearie, all."
+
+"But are you sure they have failed--that there is no mistake?"
+
+"Quite sure.  I've read it myself pinned on the door, and the
+shutters up, like a thing you read of in the newspapers.  No, it's
+right.  There's not often a mistake about bad news."
+
+Eve bent over him very tenderly and kissed him.  He was holding her
+hand between his, patting it gently with his rough, weather-beaten
+fingers.  He was looking straight in front of him with that painful
+look of helplessness which had earned him the friendship of Lord
+Seahampton in Barcelona.
+
+"But," said the girl at length, "you cannot go to sea again."
+
+She knew that he would never get a ship, for his seamanship, like
+all other things that were his, was hopelessly superannuated.  He
+was not fit to be trusted with a ship--no owner would dream of it,
+no crew would sail under him.
+
+"There's men," said the captain humbly, "who learnt their seamanship
+from me--who sailed under me--p'raps one of them would give me a
+berth as first mate or even second mate under him--for a shipmate
+they would do it."
+
+Captain Bontnor had fallen behind the times even in his sentiments.
+He did not know that in these days of short voyages, of Seamen's
+Unions, and Firemen's Friendlies and Stokers' Guilds, a shipmate is
+no longer a special friend--the tie is broken, as are many other
+ties, by the advance of education.
+
+Then the old man pulled himself together, and smiled bravely at his
+niece.
+
+"It is not for myself that I'm worrying," he said, "but for you.  I
+don't quite see my way clear yet.  It's sort of sharp and sudden.  I
+cannot get the poor Mertons out of my head--people that have been
+accustomed to their carriages and all.  It's hard for them!  You
+see, what they say is that their financial facilities have been
+withdrawn, and I dare say nobody is to blame.  It is just what they
+call the hand of God, in a bill of lading--just the hand of God."
+
+"Yes, dear," answered Eve.  "And now I am going to serve out a glass
+of sherry; you want it after your quick walk.  That is what you did
+at sea, you served it out, did you not?"
+
+"He, he! yes, dearie; that is it."
+
+His rugged hand shook as he drank the wine.
+
+"Only," he went on, after wiping his moustache vigorously with a red
+pocket-handkerchief--"only it was rum, dearie--rum, you know, for
+heavy weather.  It puts heart into the men."
+
+His face suddenly clouded over again.
+
+"And we've run into heavy weather, haven't we?  Just the hand of
+God."
+
+"Finish the glass," said Eve, and she stood over him while he drank
+the wine.
+
+"And now," she went on, "listen to me.  I have had a very important
+letter, which could hardly have come at a more opportune moment.  In
+fact, I think we may call it also . . . what they say in a bill of
+lading."
+
+She opened the letter, as if about to read it aloud, and on glancing
+through she seemed to change her mind.
+
+"It is from Mrs. Harrington," she said.  "It is a very kind letter."
+
+She looked at her uncle, whose face had suddenly hardened.  He
+seemed to be schooling himself to hear something unpleasant.
+
+"Ay!" he muttered, "ay! I suppose she'll get her way now.  I suppose
+I can't hope to keep you now.  She'll get you--she'll get you."
+
+"Then I think you are a very mean old man!" exclaimed Eve.  "I don't
+believe you are a sailor at all.  You are what you call a land-
+lubber, if you think that I am the sort of person to accept your
+kindness when you are prosperous, and then--and then when heavy
+weather comes to go away and leave you."
+
+The old man smiled rather wanly, and fumbled with the red pocket-
+handkerchief.
+
+"As it happens, Mrs. Harrington does not ask me to go and stay with
+her--she asks me--"  She paused and laid her hand on his shoulder
+gently.  "She asks me--to accept money."
+
+Captain Bontnor sat upright.
+
+"Ay-y-y," he said, "charity."
+
+"Yes," said Eve quietly, "charity; and I'm going to accept it."
+
+Captain Bontnor scratched his head.  His manners were not, as has
+already been stated, remarkable for artificiality or superficial
+refinement.  He screwed up his features as if he were swallowing
+something nasty.
+
+"Read me the letter," he said.
+
+Eve opened the missive again, and looked at it.
+
+"She puts it very nicely," she said.  "She asks if you will permit
+me to accept a dress allowance from a rich woman who does not always
+spend her money discreetly."
+
+It must be admitted that Mrs. Harrington's nice way of putting it
+lost nothing by its transmission through Eve's lips.
+
+Thus poor Charity creeps in wherever she can shelter.  She is not
+proud.  She does not ask to be accepted for her own sake; though
+Heaven knows she frequently is.  She masquerades in any costume--she
+accepts the humiliation of any disguise.  She is ready to be cast
+down before swine, or raised high before the eyes of fools.  She is
+used as a tool or a stepping-stone--the humble handmaid of the tuft-
+hunter and the toady.  She is dragged through the mire of the slums
+to the dwellings of the wealthy and idle.  She is hounded up and
+down the world--the plaything of Fashion, the trap of the unwary,
+the washerwoman of the unclean who wish to try the paths of virtue--
+for a change.  And she is still Charity, and she lives strong and
+pure in herself.  It has been decreed that we shall ever have the
+poor beside us, and so long shall we also possess those who live on
+them.
+
+Charity begetteth charity, and it was for Charity's sake that Eve
+Challoner took the bitter bread to herself, and accepted Mrs.
+Harrington's offer.
+
+Her own pride lay between her and this woman whom she knew to be
+capricious, uncertain, lacking the quality of justice.  Her duty
+towards Captain Bontnor lay between her and high Heaven.
+
+So Eve Challoner learnt her first lesson in that school where we all
+are called to study sooner or later--the school of Adversity; where
+some of us pass creditably, whilst others are ploughed, and a few--a
+very few--take honours.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE SECOND.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.  BITS OF LIFE.
+
+                     Some far-off touch
+     Of greatness, to know well I am not great.
+
+The local house-agent anticipated no difficulty in letting Malabar
+Cottage, furnished, at a good weekly rental; and in due course a
+dreamy clergyman, with a wife who was anything but dreamy, came and
+saw and hired.  The wide-awake wife was so interested in Eve that
+she forgot to settle several details which came to her mind
+afterwards.  Her curiosity was so aroused that the special cupidity
+belonging to the wife of the dreamy clergyman was for the moment
+allayed, and she forgot to drive a hard bargain.
+
+Moreover, Eve's manner was not exactly encouraging to the would-be
+bargainer.  A stupendous ignorance of the tricks of furnished house-
+letting, combined with a certain lofty contempt for details,
+acquired in Spain, where such contempt is thoroughly understood,
+completely baffled the clergyman's wife.  She concluded that Eve was
+a very stupid and ignorant girl, a poor housekeeper, and an
+incompetent woman of the world; and yet she was afraid of her,
+simply because she did not understand her.  Jews, poor men's wives,
+and other persons who live by haggling, have a subtle fear of those
+who will not haggle.
+
+So Malabar Cottage was let; and in due time the sad day arrived when
+Captain Bontnor had to bid farewell to his "bits of things."  These
+"bits of things" were in reality bits of his life--and a human life
+is not so long nor so interesting an affair that we can afford
+lightly to break off any portion, to throw it away, or even to let
+it out on hire.
+
+Captain Bontnor wandered rather disconsolately round the rooms after
+breakfast, and as Eve was with him he gave her a short inventory of
+these pieces of his life.
+
+"That there harpoon," he said, pointing to a rusty relic on the wall
+above the mantelpiece, "was given to me by the finest whaling
+captain that ever found his way into the North water.  When I first
+went to sea I thought I'd like to be a whaler; but two voyages
+settled that fancy.  I'm told they shoot their harpoons out of a gun
+nowadays--poor sport that!  And there's no sport like whalin'.  Two
+thousand pounds at one end of a line and your own life at the other-
+-that's finer sport than these Cockney partridge-shooters know of.
+
+"And that's my seal-pick--many a seal have I killed with that.  That
+there's the portrait of the True Love, three-masted schooner, built
+at Littlehampton by Harvey.  Sailed second mate, first mate, and
+master in her, I did.  Then she was sold; and a lubber went and--and
+threw her on the Kentish Knock in a south-easterly gale.  She was a
+pretty ship!  I felt the loss as if she'd been my sweetheart--the
+pretty little True Love!
+
+"That string of shells was given to me by a shipmate--old Charlie
+Sams--to bring home for his wife.  He picked 'em up on the beach
+above James Town.  Took yellow Jack, he did, and died in my arms--
+and he only had the shells to send to his young wife and a bit of a
+baby he was always botherin' and talkin' about.  I did two cross
+voyages, and one of them round the Horn, before I got home, and I
+couldn't find the woman, she having moved.  So when I left the sea,
+I just hung them up in case she happened to come along by chance and
+see them with his portrait underneath.  That's Charlie Sams--a bit
+brown and faded.  She won't come along now, I suppose.  It is a
+matter of fifty-five years since Charlie died."
+
+As he wandered round the house, so he wandered on in his
+reminiscences, until Eve led him out of the front door.  He took his
+hat from the peg which he had been intending to unship and refix at
+a lower level for the last fifteen years, and followed her meekly
+into the garden.  He paused to pick up some yellow jasmine leaves
+which had withered in the warmth of the May sun and fallen on the
+doorstep.  Then he looked back longingly.
+
+"You see," said Eve cheerfully, "it is only for a few months.  We
+can always let it in the summer like this, and live luxuriously on
+our rent in the winter."
+
+He threw back his shoulders and smiled bravely, trying to banish the
+thought of his "bits of things."
+
+"Yes, dearie, it's only for a few months--only for a few months."
+
+And they both knew that they could not hope to live in Malabar
+Cottage again--not, at all events, on the rent paid by the
+clergyman's wife.
+
+They had taken lodgings in a small house near the harbour, which, as
+Eve pointed out, was much more convenient for the shops; and,
+besides, they could now buy their fish out of the boats.  This last
+theory she propounded with a grave assumption of housekeeping
+knowledge which did not fail to impress Captain Bontnor.
+
+The whole town knew of the captain's misfortune, and half the
+citizens of Somarsh shared in it.  Only those who had saved nothing
+lost nothing, for Merton's was the only bank on the coast; and more
+than one old fisherman--bent with rheumatism, crippled by the
+hardships of a life spent half in the water, half on it--saw his
+savings--the fruit of long toilsome years--go to pay the London
+tradesmen a part of what young Merton owed them.  It was the old,
+oft-repeated tale of over-education.  A country banker's son sent to
+public school and university to be educated out of country banking
+and into nothing else.
+
+Captain Bontnor was quite penniless.  During his long life he had
+saved nearly four thousand pounds, and this sum he had placed on
+deposit with the Somarsh bankers, living very comfortably on the
+interest.  The whole of this was absorbed--a mere drop in the
+financial ocean.
+
+Mrs. Harrington had asked Eve to accept a dress allowance of forty
+pounds a year, and Eve accepted--for her uncle.  Besides this she
+had a little ready money--the result of the sale of the contents of
+the Casa d'Erraha.  A person who looked like a butler or a major-
+domo had gone over from Barcelona to Palma to attend this sale; and
+the local buyers laughed immoderately at him in their sleeves.  He
+was, they opined, a mule--he did not know the value of things, and
+paid double for all he bought.
+
+But the proceeds of the sale did not amount to much.  Eve knew that
+something must be done.  The money would soon be exhausted, and they
+could not live on the dress allowance.  Since the failure of the
+bank, Captain Bontnor's mental grasp had seemed less reliable than
+ever, and Eve had kept these things to herself.
+
+The captain's one servant--an aged female--who ruined his digestion
+and neglected her dusting, was prevailed upon to return to her
+people, and Eve and her uncle settled down to their restricted life
+in the lodgings which were so conveniently near the fishing harbour.
+
+The captain was too old to break off his habits of life, so he
+walked his quarter-deck tramp, backwards and forwards beneath the
+window on the clean pavement of the High Street, which broadened out
+to the harbour.  He went down to meet the boats, where he was ever a
+welcome onlooker, and he never came back without fish for which no
+payment had been taken.
+
+He usually met the postman when he was keeping his watch on deck--
+beneath the little bay-window--and if there was a letter for Eve, he
+would pause in front of the house, and hand it through the open
+sash.
+
+He did this one morning after they had been in the lodgings a month,
+and he had not added two turns to the regulation forty before Eve
+called to him.  He bustled in at the door, hung his old straw hat on
+a peg, which was likewise too high, and went into the little
+parlour.  As he was smoking, he stood in the doorway, for he had not
+yet got over his immense respect for the niece who was above him.
+
+"Yes, dearie?" he said.  "What to do now?"
+
+Eve was standing near the window, holding a letter in her hand.
+
+"Listen!" she said, and spreading out her elbows she read grandly -
+
+"'MADAM,--I like your Spanish Notes and Sketches; but I cannot put
+in number one until I see number two.  Send me more, or, better
+still, if convenient, when you are next in town, do me the honour of
+calling here.--Yours very truly--'
+
+"Now listen, uncle."
+
+"Yes, dear!"
+
+                       "'Yours very truly,
+                                 "'JOHN CRAIK.'"
+
+"Lor!" ejaculated Captain Bontnor, "the gentleman that writes."
+
+Eve handed him the letter, which he held, awestruck, with the tip of
+his thumb and finger.
+
+"He doesn't write very well--he, he!" he added, with a chuckle.
+"I'm afraid it's no good my trying to read it without my glasses."
+
+He blinked at the crabbed spidery caligraphy, and handed the letter
+back.
+
+"It is signed John Craik, but Providence held the pen," said Eve.
+"If this letter had not come I should have had to leave you, uncle.
+I should have had to go and be a governess.  And I do not want to
+leave you."
+
+The old man's eyes filled suddenly, as old eyes sometimes will.  He
+stuffed his pipe into his pocket and took her two hands in his,
+patting them tenderly.
+
+He did not speak for some time, but stood blinking back the tears.
+
+"Then God bless John Craik!" he said.  "God bless him."
+
+They sat down to talk this thing over, forgetful of the captain's
+pipe, which burnt a hole in the lining of his coat.  There was so
+much to be discussed.  Eve had written a certain number of short
+essays--painfully conscious all the while of their simplicity and
+faultiness.  She did not know that so long as a person has his
+subject at his finger-ends, simplicity is rather to be commended
+than otherwise.  It is the half-informed who are verbose.  She had
+written simply of the simple life which she knew so well.  She had
+depicted Spanish daily life from the keenly instinctive standpoint
+of a woman's observation; and only a week before she had sent a
+single essay--marked number one--to the editor of the Commentator,
+John Craik.
+
+She had written for money, and made no disguise of her motive.  Here
+was no literary lady with all the recognised adjuncts except the
+literature.  She did not write in order that she might talk of
+having written.  She did not talk in such flowing periods and with
+such overbearing wisdom that insincere friends in sheer weariness
+were called upon to suggest that she should and could write.
+
+In sending her first small attempt to John Craik she had not
+forwarded therewith a long explanatory letter, which reticence had
+made him read the manuscript.
+
+Eve read the great man's letter a second time, while the captain
+scratched his head and watched her.
+
+"And," he said meekly, "what do you think of doing?"
+
+Eve looked up with a happy smile.
+
+"What he tells me," she answered.  "Oh, I am so glad, uncle; I
+cannot tell you how glad I am."
+
+The captain shuffled awkwardly on his feet.
+
+"I'm more than glad," he said.  "I'm sorter proud."
+
+He pulled down his coat and walked to the window.
+
+"Yes," he said, looking out into the street.  "That's it.  I'm
+proud.  It's a great gift--writin'.  A great gift."
+
+Eve laughed.
+
+"Oh!" she answered.  "I'm afraid that I have no gift.  It is a very,
+very minute talent.  That is all.  I always liked books, but I have
+not the gift for writing them."
+
+Captain Bontnor never thought Eve was a great authoress.  In his
+simple way this man had a vast deal of discrimination, as simple
+people often have.  It is the oversubtle man who makes the most
+egregious mistakes, because most of us have not time to be subtle.
+He never suspected Eve of being a great authoress, and he never
+attributed to her any desire to attain that doubtful pinnacle of
+fame.  But he saw very plainly the immense advantage to be gathered
+in this time from her talent.  In his simplicity he hoped that
+something would turn up for him to do, in a world which has no pity
+nor charity for that which is old, effete, and out of fashion.
+
+"Yes," he said, after deep thought, "we must do what he tells us.
+There's no harm in that."
+
+Eve laughed.
+
+"I thought," she said, "that we understood pride in Spain and
+Mallorca; but I have never met such a proud caballero as you."
+
+She was standing behind him where he stood, looking grimly out of
+the window, her two hands resting on his broad shoulders.
+
+"I suppose," she went on, "that you have once or twice humbled your
+pride so much as to accept a ship when it was offered you.  You said
+that there are plenty who would give you a command now.  John Craik
+is giving me a ship, that is all."
+
+The captain nodded.
+
+"Yes," he said, "that's it, that's it.  You've got your first ship."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.  A COMPACT.
+
+     Prends moy tel que je suy.
+
+The tendency of the age is to peep behind the scenes.  The world is
+growing old, and human nature is nearly worn through; we are
+beginning to see the bare bones of it.  But a strange survival of
+youthfulness is that remarkable fascination of the unseen--the
+desire to get behind the scenes and see the powder for ourselves.
+If a man makes his livelihood by lifting horses and other heavy
+objects from the earth, we immediately wish to know details of his
+private life, and an obliging journalist interviews him.  If another
+write a book, we immediately wish to know how he does it, where,
+when, and why.  We also like to see his portrait on the fly-leaf--or
+HE likes to see it there.
+
+Eve Challoner was lamentably behind the spirit of the age in that
+she did not know how she wrote a series of articles destined to
+attain renown.  But as she never went out to meet the interviewer,
+he never came to her.  She fell into a habit of going out for long
+walks by herself, and in the course of these peregrinations she
+naturally acquired the custom of thinking about her writing.
+
+During these long walks Captain Bontnor remained at home alone, or
+joined a knot of fellow-mariners on the green in front of the
+reading-room.  When Eve came home with her mind full of matter to be
+set down on paper he discreetly went to keep his watch on deck--
+backwards and forwards on the pavement in front of the window.  At
+each turn the old sailor paused to cast his eyes over the whole
+horizon, after the manner of mariners, as if he were steering
+Somarsh across the North Sea.
+
+Thus uncle and niece glided imperceptibly into that mode of life
+which is called humdrum, and which some wise people consider the
+best mode of getting through existence.  Sketch number two was
+written, rewritten, liked, hated, and finally sent to John Craik,
+with a letter explaining that the writer lived in Suffolk, and could
+not for the moment make it convenient to go to London.  John Craik
+was a busy man.  He made no answer, and in a few days the proof of
+sketch number one arrived, with a little printed notice of
+instructions as to correcting and returning.  Of all fleeting
+glamours that of the proof-sheet is assuredly lightest on the wing,
+and Eve duly hated her own works in print, as we all do hate our
+first triumphs.  Afterwards we get resigned--much as we grow
+resigned to the face we see in the looking-glass.
+
+At this time Captain Bontnor conceived the idea that it was
+incumbent upon him to take up seriously, though late in life, the
+higher walks of literature.
+
+"Now," he said to Eve one evening, when the first proof had been
+almost wept over, "now, dearie, what author would you recommend to a
+man who has a natural likin' for reading, but owing to the
+circumstances of his life has had no opportunity of cultivatin' his
+taste?"
+
+"Well, uncle, a good deal would depend upon his inclination--whether
+he liked poetry or fiction, or serious reading."
+
+"Of course, of course," acceded Captain Bontnor, pressing the
+tobacco into his pipe with his thumb; "I am taking that into
+consideration.  There's all sorts to be had now, ain't there--poetry
+and fiction and novels?  I am not sure that the style would matter
+much, so long--so long as the print was nice and clear."
+
+Eve duly gave her opinion without pressing the question too closely,
+and while she was out on her long walks Captain Bontnor laboriously
+cultivated his neglected taste.  He sat in the window-seat with much
+gravity, and more than made up in application for the youthful
+quickness which he lacked.  He resolutely refused to look up from
+his book when he heard the alternate thud and stump which announced
+the passage down to the harbour of his particular crony, Mark
+Standon, whose other leg had been buried at sea.  He kept the
+dictionary beside him, and when the writer used a word of sonorous
+ring and obscure meaning he gravely looked it out.
+
+The first time that Mr. Standon saw his friend thus engaged he stood
+on the pavement and expressed his surprise with more force than
+elegance; whereupon Captain Bontnor went out and explained to him
+exactly how it stood.  So marked was the old sailor's influence on
+the social affairs at Somarsh that there was a notable revival of
+literary taste and discussion at the corner of the Lifeboat House,
+where the local intellect assembled.
+
+Captain Bontnor was engaged one day in the study of an author called
+Dickens, to whose works he had not yet found time to devote his full
+attention, when a strange footstep on the pavement made him look up.
+It certainly was not Standon's halting gait, and a lack of iron nail
+certified to the fact that it was no Somarsh man.  The captain
+looked over his spectacles and saw Cipriani de Lloseta studying the
+numbers on the doors as he came down the quiet little street.
+
+The sight gave the old sailor rather a shock.  He abandoned the
+study of Mr. Dickens and took off his spectacles.  Then he scratched
+his head--always an ominous sign.  His first instinct was to go and
+open the door; then he remembered that the new-comer was a nobleman
+who lived in a palace, and that he himself was indirectly a
+gentleman, inasmuch as he lived in the same house as a lady--his
+niece.  So he sat still and allowed the landlady to open the door.
+
+When Cipriani de Lloseta was ushered into the tiny room he found the
+captain half-bowing on the hearthrug.
+
+"Captain Bontnor," he said, with all the charm of manner which was
+his, "this is a pleasure."
+
+The captain shook hands, and with the rough hospitality of the cabin
+drew forward his own armchair, which the Count took at once.
+
+"When last we met," he said, "I had the privilege of receiving you
+at my house in Barcelona--a poor dark place in a narrow street.  Now
+here you have a sea-view."
+
+"But this is not my house," said Captain Bontnor, feeling
+unaccountably at ease with this nobleman.  "Malabar Cottage is
+farther up the hill.  I've got all my bits of things up there."
+
+"Indeed.  It would have given me pleasure to see them.  I learnt
+from a mutual--friend, Mrs. Harrington, of your change of address."
+
+Captain Bontnor looked at him keenly; and who shall say that the
+rough old man did not appreciate the refined tact of his visitor?
+
+"I've had losses," he said.
+
+The Count nodded shortly.  He was drawing off his gloves.
+
+"I do not know," he said conversationally, "if it has been your
+experience, but for myself I have found that reverses of fortune are
+not without some small consolation.  They prove the friendship of
+one's friends."
+
+The captain reflected.
+
+"Yes," he said, "you're right, Mr.--I mean Count--and--and brings
+the good out of women."
+
+"Women!" the Count repeated gravely.  "You refer to Miss Challoner--
+I see signs of her presence in this room.  Is she out?"
+
+"Yes--I am afraid she is."  He glanced nervously at the clock.  "She
+is not likely to be in for an hour and more yet."
+
+"I am sorry," said the Count; "but also I am rather glad.  I shall
+thus have an opportunity of asking your opinion upon one or two
+matters--between men of the world, you know."
+
+"I am afraid my opinion is not of much value, sir, except it's about
+schooners--I always sailed in schooners."
+
+The Count nodded gravely.
+
+"In my country," he said, "we usually go in for brigs; they find
+them easier to handle.  But you know Mallorca--you have seen for
+yourself."
+
+The captain was not listening; he was looking at the modest lodging-
+house sideboard.
+
+"I was wondering," he explained, with a transparent simplicity which
+was perhaps as good as that which is called good breeding, "whether
+you would take a glass of sherry wine."
+
+"I should like nothing better," said the Count.  "It will give me
+pleasure to take a glass of wine with you."
+
+Quietly, imperceptibly, De Lloseta set Captain Bontnor at his ease,
+and at the same time he mastered him.  They spoke of indifferent
+topics--topics which, however, were well within the captain's
+knowledge of the world.  Then suddenly the Count laid aside the
+social mask which he wore with such consummate ease.
+
+"I came down to Somarsh," he said, "because I am deeply distressed
+at your reverse of fortune.  I came to see you, captain, because
+when I had the pleasure of meeting you at Barcelona I saw you to be
+a just man, and one to whom one could speak openly.  I am a rich
+man--you understand.  Need I say more?"
+
+Captain Bontnor blinked uncertainly.
+
+"No," he answered, "I'm thinkin' it isn't necessary."
+
+"Not between men of the world," urged Cipriani de Lloseta.  "It is
+not for your sake.  I would not insult you in such a way.  It is for
+Eve.  For a woman's sake a man may easily sacrifice his pride."
+
+The captain nodded and glanced at the clock.  He had not fully
+realised until that moment how dependent he was upon his niece.
+
+"You know," continued the Count, following up his advantage, "all
+the somewhat peculiar circumstances of the case.  Do you think there
+is any chance of Eve's reconsidering her decision?"
+
+The captain shook his head.
+
+"No," he answered bluntly, "I don't.  Since she came back from
+London--" he paused.
+
+"Yes, since she came back from London?" suggested the Count.
+
+"She seems more determined than ever."
+
+The Count was looking at him keenly.
+
+"Then," he said, "you also have noticed a change."
+
+Captain Bontnor shuffled in his seat and likewise in his speech.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "that she has grown into a woman.  Adversity's
+done it."
+
+"Yes," said the Count, "your observations seem to me to be correct.
+I had the pleasure of seeing her once or twice when she was staying
+at Mrs. Harrington's; but I did not refer to the question raised at
+my house in Barcelona, because I noticed the change to which you
+allude.  Instead, I attempted to gain the co-operation and
+assistance of a mutual friend, Henry FitzHenry."
+
+Cipriani de Lloseta paused and looked at his companion, who in turn
+gazed stolidly at the fire.
+
+"And I received a rebuff," added the Count.  He waited for some
+little time, but Captain Bontnor had no comment to offer, so De
+Lloseta went on:  "Challoner was one of my best friends.  I do not
+feel disposed to let the matter drop, more especially now that you
+have been compelled to leave Malabar Cottage.  I propose entreating
+Miss Challoner to reconsider her decision.  Will you help me?"
+
+"Yes," answered Captain Bontnor, "I will."
+
+"Then tell me if Eve has accepted assistance from Mrs. Harrington?"
+
+"Yes, she has."
+
+The Count swore softly in Spanish.
+
+"I am sorry for that," he said aloud.  "I am superstitious.  I have
+a theory that Mrs. Harrington's money is apt to be a curse to those
+upon whom it is bestowed."
+
+"Mrs. Harrington's no friend of mine," said Captain Bontnor; and De
+Lloseta, who was looking out of the window, smiled somewhat grimly.
+
+"Perhaps," he said after a little pause, "perhaps you will allow me
+to claim the privilege which you deny to her?"
+
+"Yes," answered Captain Bontnor awkwardly; "yes, if you care to."
+
+"Thanks.  I see Miss Challoner--Eve--coming.  I count on your
+assistance."
+
+Eve paused on the threshold in astonishment at the sight of the
+Count de Lloseta and her uncle in grave discourse over a glass of
+sherry.
+
+"You!" she said.  "You here!"
+
+And he wondered why she suddenly lost colour.
+
+"I," he answered, "I--here to pay my respects."
+
+Eve gave a little gasp of relief.  For a moment she was off her
+guard--with a dangerous man watching her.
+
+"I thought you had bad news," she said.
+
+And Cipriani de Lloseta knew that this was a woman whose heart was
+at sea.
+
+"No," he answered; "I merely came to quarrel."
+
+He drew forward a chair, and Eve sat down.
+
+"We shall always quarrel," he went on, "unless you are kind.  Let us
+begin at once and get it over, because I want to stay to lunch.
+Will you reconsider your decision with respect to the Val d'Erraha?"
+
+Eve shook her head and looked at her uncle.
+
+"No," she answered; "I cannot do that.  Not now."
+
+"Some day?" he suggested.
+
+"Not now," repeated the girl; and, looking up, her face suddenly
+became grave, as if reflecting the expression in the dark Spanish
+eyes bent upon her.
+
+"You are cruel!" he said.
+
+"I am young--"
+
+"Is it not the same thing?"
+
+"And I can work," added Eve.
+
+"Yes," he said.  "But in my old-fashioned way I am prejudiced
+against a lady working.  In the days of women's rights ladies are
+apt to forget the charm of white hands."
+
+Eve made no answer.
+
+"Then it is not peace?"
+
+"No," she answered, with a smile; "not yet."
+
+She was standing beside Captain Bontnor, with her hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+"Uncle and I," she added, "are not beaten yet."
+
+Cipriani de Lloseta smiled darkly.
+
+"Will you promise me one thing," he said; "that when you are beaten
+you will come to me before you go to any one else?"
+
+"Yes," answered Eve, "I think we can promise that."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.  BAFFLED.
+
+     He conquers who awaits the end.
+
+Fortune fixed her wayward fancy on the first sketch that Eve
+contributed to the Commentator.  Wayward, indeed, for Eve herself
+knew that it was not good, and in the lettered quiet of the
+editorial sanctum John Craik smiled querulously to himself.  John
+Craik had a supreme contempt for the public taste, but he knew
+exactly what it wanted.  He was like a chef smiling over his made
+dishes.  He did not care for the flavour himself, but his palate was
+subtle enough to detect the sweet or bitter that tickled his
+master's tongue.  He served the public faithfully, with a twisted,
+cynic smile behind his spectacles--for John Craik had a family to
+feed.  He knew that Eve's work was only partially good--true woman's
+work that might cease to flow at any moment.  But he detected the
+undeniable originality of it, and the public palate likes a novel
+flavour.
+
+So deeply versed was he in worldly knowledge, so thoroughly had he
+gauged the critic, the journalist, and the public, that before he
+unfolded a newspaper he could usually foresee the length, the
+nature, and the literary merit of the criticism.  He knew that the
+tendency of the age is to acquire as much knowledge as possible in a
+short time.  He looked upon the world as a huge kindergarten, and
+the Commentator as its school-book.  It was good that the world's
+knowledge of its own geography should be extended, but the world
+must not be allowed to detect the authority of the usher's voice.
+There are a lot of people who, like women at a remnant sale, go
+about the paths of literature picking up scraps which do not match,
+and never can be of the slightest use.  It was John Craik's business
+to set out his remnant counter to catch these wandering gleaners,
+and Eve sent him her wares by a lucky chance at the moment when he
+wanted them.
+
+The editor of the Commentator was sitting in his deep chair before
+the fire one morning about eleven o'clock, when the clerk, whose
+business it was to tell glib lies about his chief, brought him a
+card.
+
+"Lloseta," said Craik aloud to himself.  "Ask him to come up."
+
+"The man who ought to have written the Spanish sketches," he
+commented, when the clerk had left.
+
+The Count came into the room with a certain ease of manner subtly
+indicative of the fact that it was not the first time that he had
+visited it.  He shook hands and waited until the clerk had closed
+the door.
+
+There was a copy of the month's Commentator on the table.  De
+Lloseta took it up and opened it at the first page.
+
+"Who wrote that?" he asked, holding out the magazine.
+
+Craik laughed--a sudden boyish laugh--but he held his sides the
+while.
+
+"You not only beard the lion in his den, but you ask him to tell you
+the tricks of his trade," he said.  "Sit down, all the same.  You
+don't mind my pipe, do you?"
+
+The Spaniard sat down and sought a cigarette-case in his waistcoat
+pocket with a deliberation that made his companion fidget in his
+chair.
+
+"You asked me to write those sketches," said the Count pleasantly.
+"I delayed and you gave the order to some one else.  Assuredly I
+have a certain right to ask who my supplanter is."
+
+"None whatever, my dear Lloseta.  I did not give the order for those
+sketches--they came."
+
+"From whom?"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"You will not tell me?"
+
+"My dear man, I cannot.  The smell of printing ink is not good for a
+man's morals.  Leave me my unsullied honour."
+
+The Count had lighted his cigarette.  He looked keenly at his
+companion's deeply-lined face, and the blue smoke floated between
+them.
+
+"There are not many people who could have written that article," he
+said.  "For the few English who know Spain like that are known to
+the natives.  And no Spaniard would have dared to write it."
+
+John Craik laughed, and while he was laughing his eyes were grave
+and full of keen observation.
+
+"Then you admit that it is true," he said.
+
+"Yes," answered the Count; "it is true--all of it.  The writer knows
+my country as few Englishmen--or WOMEN know it."
+
+John Craik was leaning back in his deep chair an emaciated, pain-
+stricken form.  His calm grey eyes met the quick glance, and did not
+fall nor waver.
+
+"Then you will not tell me?"
+
+"No.  But why are you so anxious to know?"
+
+The Count smoked for a few seconds in silence.
+
+"I will tell you," he said suddenly, "in confidence."
+
+Craik nodded, and settled himself again in his chair.  He was a very
+fidgety man.
+
+"It is not the first article that I care about," explained De
+Lloseta.  "It is that which is behind it.  This"--he laid his hand
+on the page--"is my own country, the north and east of Spain, the
+wildest part of the Peninsula, the home of the Catalonians, who have
+always been the leaders in strife and warfare.  It is the country
+from whence my family has its source.  All that is written about
+Catalonia or the Baleares must necessarily refer in part to me and
+mine.  This writer may know too much."
+
+"I think," said John Craik, "that I can guarantee that if the writer
+does know too much, the Commentator shall not be the channel through
+which the knowledge will reach the public."
+
+"Thanks; but--can you guarantee it?  Can you guarantee that the
+public interest, being aroused by these articles, may not ask for
+further details, which details might easily be given elsewhere, in
+something less--respectable--than the Commentator?"
+
+"My dear sir, one would think you had a crime on your conscience."
+
+Cipriani de Lloseta smiled--such a smile as John Craik had never
+seen before.
+
+"I have many," he answered.  "Who has not?"
+
+"Yes; they accumulate as life goes on, do they not?"
+
+"What I fear," went on De Lloseta, "is the idle gossip which obtains
+in England under the pleasant title of 'Society Notes,' 'Boudoir
+Chat,' and other new-fangled vulgarities.  In Spain we have not
+that."
+
+"Then Spain is the Promised Land."
+
+"Your Society journalists may talk of the English nobility, though
+the aristocracy that fills the 'Society Notes' is almost invariably
+the aristocracy of yesterday.  But I want to keep the Spanish
+families out of it if possible--the names that were there before
+printing was invented."
+
+"Printing and education are too cheap nowadays," said John Craik.
+"They are both dangerous instruments in the hands of fools, and it
+is the fool who goes to the cheap market.  But you need not be
+afraid of the Society papers.  It is only those who wish to be
+advertised who find themselves there."
+
+De Lloseta's thoughts had gone back to the Commentator.  He picked
+up the magazine and was looking over the pages of the Spanish
+article.
+
+"It is clever," he said.  "It is very clever."
+
+Craik nodded, after the manner of one who had formed his own opinion
+and intended to abide by it.  He was a gentle-mannered man in the
+ordinary intercourse of life, but on the battlefield of letters he
+was a veritable Coeur-de-Lion.  He quailed before no man.
+
+"You know," said the Count, "there are only two persons who could
+have written this--and they are women.  If it is the one, I fear
+nothing; if the other, I fear everything."
+
+"Then," said John Craik, shuffling in his chair, "fear nothing."
+
+De Lloseta looked at him sharply.
+
+"I could force you to tell a lie by mentioning the name of the woman
+who wrote this," he said.
+
+"Then don't!" said John Craik.  "I lie beautifully!"
+
+"No, I will not.  But I will ask you to do something for me instead:
+let me read the proofs of these as they are printed."
+
+For exactly two seconds John Craik pondered.
+
+"I shall be happy to do that," he said.  "I will let you know when
+the proof is ready.  You must come here and read it in this room."
+
+Cipriani de Lloseta rose from his seat.
+
+"Thank you," he said, holding out his hand.  "I will not keep you
+from your work.  You are doing a better action than you are aware
+of."
+
+He took the frail fingers in his grasp for a second and turned to
+go.  Before the door closed behind him John Craik was at work again.
+
+So Eve Challoner's work passed through Cipriani de Lloseta's hand,
+and that nobleman came into her life from another point.  It would
+seem that in whichsoever direction she turned, the Mallorcan was
+waiting for her with his grave persistence, his kindly determination
+to watch over her, to exercise that manly control over her life
+which is really the chief factor of feminine happiness on earth--if
+women only knew it.  For all through Nature there are qualities
+given to the male for the sole advantage of the female, and the
+beasts of the forest rise up in silent protest against the nonsense
+that is talked to-day of woman's place in the world.  We may
+consider the beasts of the field to advantage, for through all the
+chances and changes of education, of female emancipation, and the
+subjection of the weaker sort of man, there will continue to run to
+the end of time the one grand principle that the male is there to
+protect the female and the female to care for her young.
+
+Cipriani de Lloseta thus late in life seemed to have found an
+object.  Eve Challoner, while bringing back the past with a flood of
+recollections--for she seemed to carry the air of Mallorca with her-
+-had so far brought him to the present that for the first time since
+thirty years and more he began to be interested in the life that was
+around him.
+
+He suspected--nay, he almost knew--that Eve had written the article
+in the Commentator which had attracted so much attention.  John
+Craik had to a certain extent baffled him.  He had called on the
+editor of the great periodical in the hope of gleaning some detail--
+some little scrap of information which would confirm his suspicion--
+but he had come away with nothing of value excepting the promise
+that the printed matter should pass through his hands before it
+reached the public.
+
+Even if he was mistaken, and this proved after all to be the work of
+Mrs. Harrington, the fact of the proof being offered to his scrutiny
+was in itself an important safeguard.  This, however, was only a
+secondary possibility.  He knew that Eve had written this thing, and
+he wished to have the opportunity of correcting one or two small
+mistakes which he anticipated, and which he felt that he himself
+alone could rectify.
+
+In the meantime John Craik was scribbling a letter to Eve in his
+minute caligraphy.
+
+"DEAR MADAM" (he wrote), "Your first article is, I am glad to say,
+attracting considerable attention.  It is absolutely necessary that
+I should see you, with a view of laying down plans for further
+contributions.  Please let me know how this can be arranged.  Yours
+truly,
+                                        "JOHN CRAIK."
+
+And at the same time another man, to whom all these things were of
+paramount importance--to whom all that touched Eve's life was as if
+it touched his own--was reading the Commentator.  Fitz, on his way
+home from the Mediterranean, to fill the post of navigating-
+lieutenant to a new ironclad at that time fitting out at Chatham,
+bought the Commentator from an enterprising newsagent given to
+maritime venture in Plymouth harbour.  The big steamer only stayed
+long enough to discharge her mails, and Fitz being a sailor did not
+go ashore.  Instead, he sat on a long chair on deck and read the
+Commentator.  He naturally concluded that at last Cipriani de
+Lloseta had acceded to John Craik's wish.
+
+The Ingham-Bakers had come home from Malta and were at this time
+staying with Mrs. Harrington in London.  Agatha had of late taken to
+reading the newspapers somewhat exhaustively.  She read such columns
+as are usually passed over by the majority of womankind--such as
+naval intelligence and those uninteresting details of maritime
+affairs printed in small type, and stated to emanate from Lloyd's,
+wherever that vague source may be.
+
+From these neglected corners of the Morning Post Agatha Ingham-Baker
+had duly learnt that Henry FitzHenry had been appointed navigating-
+lieutenant to the Terrific, lying at Chatham, which would
+necessitate his leaving the Kittiwake at Gibraltar and returning to
+England at once.  She also read that the Indian liner Croonah had
+sailed from Malta for Gibraltar and London, with two hundred and
+five passengers and twenty-six thousand pounds in specie.
+
+And John Craik had written to Eve to come to London, where she had a
+permanent invitation to stay with Mrs. Harrington.
+
+From over the wide world these people seemed to be drifting together
+like leaves upon a pond--borne hither and thither by some unseen
+current, swirled suddenly by a passing breath--at the mercy of wind
+and weather and chance, each occupied in his or her small daily
+life, looking no further ahead than the next day or the next week.
+And yet they were drifting surely and steadily towards each other,
+driven by the undercurrent of Fate, against which the strongest will
+may beat itself in vain.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.  FOR THE HIGHEST BIDDER.
+
+     Let thine eyes look right on.
+
+"How handsome Fitz looks in his uniform!" Mrs. Ingham-Baker said,
+with that touch of nervous apprehension which usually affected all
+original remarks addressed by her to Mrs. Harrington.
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker had been to Malta and back, but the wonders of the
+deep had failed to make a wiser woman of her.  If one wishes to gain
+anything by seeing the world, it is best to go and look at it early
+in life.
+
+"Yes," answered Mrs. Harrington, with a glance in the direction of
+Agatha, the only other occupant of the drawing-room--"yes; he is a
+good-looking young fellow."
+
+Agatha was reading the Globe, sitting upright and stiff, for she was
+wearing a new ball-dress.
+
+"I think," went on Mrs. Ingham-Baker volubly, "that I have never
+seen a naval uniform before--in a room close at hand, you know.  Of
+course, on board the Croonah the officers wore a sort of uniform,
+but they had not a sword."
+
+Agatha turned over her newspaper impatiently.  Mrs. Harrington was
+listening with an air of the keenest interest, which might have been
+sarcastic.
+
+"Poor Luke had not quite so much gold braid--"
+
+Agatha looked up, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker collapsed.
+
+"I should think," she added, after some nervous shufflings in her
+seat, "that a sword is a great nuisance.  Should you not think so,
+Marion dear?"
+
+"I do not know," replied Mrs. Harrington; "I never wore one."
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker laughed eagerly at herself, after the manner of
+persons who cannot afford to keep up a decent self-respect.
+
+"But I always rather think," she went on, with an apprehensive
+glance towards her daughter, "that a sword is out of place in a
+drawing-room, or--or anywhere where there are carpets, you know."
+
+"I thought you had never seen one before," put in Agatha, without
+looking up from her newspaper.  "In a room--close at hand, you
+know."
+
+"No--no, of course not; but I knew, dear, that they were worn.  Of
+course, in warfare it is different."
+
+"In warfare," said Mrs. Harrington patiently, "they are usually
+supposed to come in rather handy."
+
+"Yes--he-he!" acquiesced Mrs. Ingham-Baker, adjusting a bracelet on
+her arm with something approaching complacency.  She thought she
+began to see daylight through the conversational maze in which--with
+the best intentions--she had involved herself.  "But I was only
+thinking that for a lady's drawing-room I think I like Luke's quiet
+black clothes just as much."
+
+"I am glad of that," said Mrs. Harrington; "because I expect you
+will see several other men in the same dress this evening."
+
+Mrs. Harrington had got up a party to go to the great naval ball of
+the season--a charity ball.  Her party consisted of the Ingham-
+Bakers and the FitzHenrys, and for the first time for eight years
+the twin brothers met in the house in Grosvenor Gardens.  They were
+at this moment in the dining-room together, where they had been left
+by their hostess with a kindly injunction to finish the port wine,
+duly tempered--as was all Mrs. Harrington's kindness--by
+instructions not to smoke.
+
+Agatha's feelings were rather mixed, so, like a wise young woman of
+the world, she read the evening paper with great assiduity and
+refused to think.
+
+The evening had been one of comparisons.  Fitz and Luke had come
+together, for they were sharing rooms in Jermyn Street.  Fitz,
+smart, upright, essentially a naval officer and an unquestionable
+gentleman.  Luke, a trifle browner, more weather-beaten, with a
+faint, subtle suggestion of a rougher life.  Fitz, easy, good-
+natured, calmly sure of himself--utterly without self-consciousness.
+Luke, conscious of inferior grade, not quite at ease, jealously on
+the alert for the comparison.
+
+And Agatha had known from the first moment that in the eyes of the
+world--and Mrs. Harrington looked through those eyes--there was no
+comparison.  Fitz carried all before him.  All except Agatha.  The
+girl was puzzled.  Luke could not be compared with Fitz, and the
+whole world did not compare with Luke.  She was fully awake to the
+contradiction, and she could not reconcile her facts.  She had been
+very properly brought up at the Brighton Boarding School, receiving
+a good, practical, modern, nineteenth-century education--a
+curriculum of solid facts culled from the latest school books, from
+which Love had very properly been omitted.
+
+And now, as she pretended to read the Globe Agatha was puzzling
+vaguely and numbly over the contradictions that come into human
+existence with the small adjunct called love.  She was wondering how
+it was that she saw Luke's faults and the thousand ways in which he
+was inferior to his brother, and yet that with all these to stay him
+up Fitz did not compare with Luke.  After all, there must have been
+some small defect in the education which she had received, for
+instead of thinking these futile things she ought to have been
+attempting to discover--as was her mother at that moment--which of
+the two brothers seemed more likely to inherit Mrs. Harrington's
+money.
+
+Agatha's thoughts went back to the moment on the deck of the
+Croonah, when the sea breeze swept over her and Luke, and the
+strength of it, the simple, open force, seemed to be part and parcel
+of him--of the strong arms around her in which she was content to
+lie quiescent.  She wondered for a moment whether it had all been
+true.
+
+For Agatha Ingham-Baker was essentially human and womanly, in that
+she was, and ever would be, a creature of possibilities.  She took
+up her long gloves and began slowly to draw them on.  They were
+quite new, and she smoothed them with a distinct satisfaction, under
+which there brooded the sense of a new possibility.  In all her
+calculations of life--and these had been many--she had never thought
+of the possibility of misery.  She buttoned the gloves, she drew
+them cunningly up over her rounded arms, and she wondered whether
+she was going to be a miserable woman all her life.  She saw herself
+suddenly with those inward eyes which are sometimes vouchsafed to us
+momentarily, and she saw Misery--in its best dress.
+
+She looked up as Fitz and Luke came into the room.  Luke's eyes were
+only for her.  Fitz, with the unconcealed absorption which was often
+his, absolutely ignored her presence.  And the little incident
+roused something contradictory in Agatha--something evil and, alas!
+feminine.  She awoke to the very matter-of-factness of the present
+moment, and she determined to make a conquest of Fitz.
+
+Agatha was not quite on her guard, and Mrs. Harrington's cold grey
+eyes were alert.  It had once been this lady's intention to use
+Agatha as a means of subjecting Luke to her own capricious will--
+Agatha being the alternative means where money had failed.  She had
+almost forgotten this when Luke came into the room with eyes only
+for Agatha--and the girl was looking at Fitz.
+
+"I suppose, Agatha," said Mrs. Harrington, "you will not be at a
+loss for partners to-night?  You will know plenty of dancing men?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose so," replied Agatha indifferently.  She turned over
+her newspaper and retreated, as it were, behind her first line of
+defence--the sure line of audacious silence.
+
+"The usual throng?"
+
+"The usual throng," answered Agatha imperturbably.
+
+Luke was biting his nails impatiently.  His jealousy was patent to
+any woman.  Fitz was talking to Mrs. Ingham-Baker.
+
+"I should advise you young men to secure your dances now," continued
+Mrs. Harrington, with her usual fatal persistence.  "Once Agatha
+gets into the room she will be snapped up."
+
+Fitz turned round with his good-natured smile--the smile that
+indicates a polite attention to an indifferent conversation--and
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker was free to thrust in her awkward oar.  She
+splashed in.
+
+"Oh, I am sure she will not let herself be snapped up to-night; will
+you, dear?"
+
+"That, no doubt, depends upon the snapper," put in Mrs. Harrington,
+looking--perhaps by accident--at Fitz.  "Fitz," she went on, "come
+here and tell me all about your new ship.  I hope you are proud--I
+am.  I am often laughed at for a garrulous old woman when I begin
+talking of you!"
+
+She glanced aside at Mrs. Ingham-Baker, who was beaming on Fitz, as
+the simple-hearted beam on the rising sun.
+
+"Yes," said the stout lady, "we are all so delighted.  Agatha was
+only saying yesterday that your success was wonderful.  She was
+quite excited about it."
+
+The fond mother looked invitingly towards her daughter with a smile
+that said as plainly as words -
+
+"There you are!  I have cleared the stage for you--step in and score
+a point."
+
+But Agatha did not respond.
+
+"I suppose it is a steamer," continued Mrs. Ingham-Baker eagerly.
+"A steam man-of-war."
+
+"Yes," replied Fitz, with perfect gravity, "a steam man-of-war."
+
+"The Horrible--or the Terrible, is it not?"
+
+"The Terrific."
+
+There was an account of the new war-ship in the evening paper which
+Agatha had laid aside, and Fitz was impolitely glancing at this
+while he spoke.  The journal gave the names of the officers.  Fitz
+was wondering whether Eve Challoner ever saw the Globe.
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker became lost in a maternal fit of admiration.  She
+was looking at Agatha with her head on one side.  At intervals she
+glanced towards Fitz--an inviting glance, as if to draw his
+attention to the fact that one of Nature's most perfect productions
+was waiting to gladden his vision.
+
+"Look!" that little glance seemed to say.  "Look at Agatha.  IS she
+not lovely?"
+
+But Fitz was still wondering whether Eve was in the habit of reading
+the Globe.  He often wondered thus about her daily habits, trying to
+picture, in his ignorant masculine way, the hours and minutes of a
+girl's daily existence.
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker could not stand this waste of his time and
+Agatha's dress.
+
+"What do you think of the frock?" she asked Mrs. Harrington, in a
+whisper which was audible to every one in the room.
+
+"It is very pretty," replied the hostess, who happened to be in a
+good humour.  Dress possessed a small corner of her cold heart.  It
+was one of very few weaknesses.  It was almost a redeeming point in
+a too man-like character.  Her own dresses were always perfect,
+usually of the richest silk--and grey.  Hence she was known as the
+Grey Lady, and only a few--for Society has neither time nor capacity
+for thought--wondered whether the colour had penetrated to her soul.
+
+The two now became engaged in a technical conversation, which was
+only interrupted by the arrival of tea.  Luke and Agatha were
+talking about Malta.  She was telling him that their friends in
+Valetta had invited them to go again next year, and the Croonah was
+mentioned.
+
+While the hostess was attending to the teapot, Mrs. Ingham-Baker
+took the opportunity of disturbing Fitz--of stirring him up, so to
+speak, and making him look at Agatha.
+
+"Do you think you would have recognised your old playmate if you had
+met her accidentally--to-night, for instance, at the ball?" she
+asked.
+
+Again the inviting glance toward her daughter, to which Fitz
+naturally responded.  It was too obvious to ignore.
+
+"No; I do not think so," he replied, going back in his mind to the
+recollection of a thin-legged little girl with lank hair.
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker's proud eyes rested complacently on her offspring.
+
+"Do you like her dress?" she asked in a whisper--only audible to
+him.  But Agatha knew the gist of it.  The arm and shoulder nearest
+to them gave a little jerk of self-consciousness.
+
+"Very pretty," replied Fitz; and Mrs. Ingham-Baker stored the remark
+away for future use.  For all she knew--or all she wanted to know--
+it might refer to Agatha's self.
+
+"I am afraid I shall lose her, you know--horribly afraid," whispered
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker, knowing the value of competition in all things.
+
+Fitz looked genuinely sympathetic, and glanced at Agatha again,
+wondering what disease had marked her for its own.  Mrs. Ingham-
+Baker thought fit to explain indirectly, as was her wont.
+
+"She is very much admired," she said under her breath, with a sigh
+and a lugubrious shake of the head.
+
+"Oh," murmured Fitz, with a smile.
+
+"Yes," answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker.  She heaved a sigh, observed a
+decent pause, and then added, "Does it surprise you?"
+
+"Not in the least.  It is most natural."
+
+"You think so--really?"
+
+"Of course I do," answered Fitz.
+
+There was another little pause, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker then said, in
+a tone of friendly confidence -
+
+"I advise you to secure your dances early.  She will be engaged
+three deep in a very short time--a lot of mere boys she does not
+want to dance with."
+
+Fitz thanked her fervently, and went to help Mrs. Harrington.
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker sat back in her chair, well pleased with herself.
+Like many of her kind, she began the social campaign with the
+initial error of underrating her natural foes--young men.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.  THE TEAR ON THE SWORD.
+
+     But over all things brooding slept
+     The quiet sense of something lost.
+
+Agatha was singularly uncertain of herself.  If it had not been for
+her education--at the Brighton school they had taught her that tears
+are not only idle, but also harmful to the complexion--she would
+have felt inclined to weep.
+
+There was something wrong about the world this evening, and she did
+not know what it was.  Little things irritated her--such as the
+creak of Mrs. Harrington's rich silk dress as that lady breathed.
+Agatha almost hated Fitz, without knowing why.  She wanted Luke to
+come and speak to her, and yet the necessity of limiting their
+conversation to mere social platitudes made her hope that he would
+not do so.
+
+At length she rose to go and make her last preparations for the
+ball.  The old habit was so strong upon her that unconsciously she
+gave a little swing of the hips to throw her skirt out--to show
+herself to the greatest advantage in the perfect dress.  There was a
+tiny suggestion of the thoroughbred horse in the paddock--as there
+always is in the attitude of some young persons, though they would
+not be grateful were one to tell them of it--a certain bridling, a
+sleek step, and a lamentably obvious search for the eye of
+admiration.  Fitz opened the door for her, and she gave him a glance
+as she passed him--a preliminary shot to find the range, as it were-
+-to note which way the wind blew.
+
+In the dimly-lighted hall Agatha suddenly became aware of a hot
+sensation in the eyelids.  The temperature of the tear of vexation
+is a high one.  As she passed towards the staircase, her glance was
+attracted by a sword, bright of hilt, dark of sheath.  Fitz's sword,
+lying with his white gloves on the table, where he had laid them on
+coming into the house.  The footman had drawn the blade an inch or
+so from the sheath--to look at the chasing--to handle the steel that
+deals in warfare with all the curiosity of one whose business lies
+among the knives of peace.
+
+Agatha paused and looked at the tokens of Fitz's calling.  She
+thought of Luke, who had no sword.  And the hot unwonted tear fell
+on the blade.
+
+All the evening Mrs. Harrington had been marked in her attention to
+Fitz.  It was quite obvious that he was--for the moment, at all
+events--the favoured nephew.  And Mrs. Ingham-Baker noted these
+things.
+
+"My dear," she whispered to Agatha, when they were waiting in the
+hall for their hostess, "it is Fitz, of course.  I can see that with
+half an eye."
+
+Agatha shrugged her shoulders in a rude manner, suggesting almost
+that her mother was deprived of more reliable means of observation
+than the moiety mentioned.
+
+"What is Fitz?" she asked, with weary patience.
+
+"Well, I can only tell you that she has called him 'dear' twice this
+evening, and I have never heard her do the same to Luke."
+
+"A lot Luke cares!" muttered Agatha scornfully, and her mother,
+whose sense of logic did not run to the perception that Luke's
+feelings were beside the question, discreetly collapsed into her
+voluminous wraps.
+
+She was, however, quite accustomed to be treated thus with
+contumely, and then later to see her suggestions acted upon--a
+feminine consolation which men would do well to take unto
+themselves.  As soon as they entered the ball-room, Mrs. Ingham-
+Baker, with that supernatural perspicacity which is sometimes found
+in stupid mothers, saw that Agatha was refusing her usual partners.
+She noted her daughter's tactics with mingled awe and admiration,
+both of which tributes were certainly deserved.  She saw Agatha look
+straight through one man at the decorations on the wall behind; she
+saw her greet an amorous youth of tender years with a semi-maternal
+air of protection which at once blighted his hopes, cured his
+passion, and made him abandon the craving for a dance.  Agatha was
+evidently reserving herself and her programme for some special
+purposes, and she did it with a skill bred of long experience.
+
+Luke was the first to come and ask for a dance--nay, he demanded it.
+
+"Do you remember the last time we danced together?" he asked, as he
+wrote on her card.
+
+"Yes," she replied, in a voice which committed her to nothing.  She
+did not look at him, but past him; to where Fitz was talking to Mrs.
+Harrington.
+
+But he was not content with that.  He retained the card and stood in
+front of her, waiting with suppressed passion in every muscle,
+waiting for her to meet his eyes.
+
+At last, almost against her will, she did, and for one brief moment
+she was supremely happy.  It was only, however, for a moment.  Sent,
+apparently, by a very practical Providence to save her from herself,
+a young man blustered good-naturedly through the crowd and planted
+himself before her with a cheery aplomb which seemed to indicate his
+supposition that in bringing her his presence he brought the desire
+of her heart and the brightest moment of the evening.
+
+"Well, Agatha," he said, in that loud voice which, with all due
+deference, usually marks the Harrovian, "how many have you got for
+me?  No rot now!  I want my share, you know, eh?"
+
+Heedless of Luke's scowling presence, he held out his hand, encased
+in a very tight glove, asking with a good-natured jerk of the head
+for her programme.
+
+"Is your wife here?" asked Agatha, smilingly relinquishing her card.
+
+"Wife be blowed!" he answered heartily.  "Why so formal?  Of course
+she's here, carrying on with all the young 'uns as usual.  She's as
+fit as paint.  But she won't like to be called stiff names.  Why
+don't you call her Maggie?"
+
+Agatha smiled and did not explain.  She doubtless had a good reason
+for the unusually formal inquiry, and she glanced at Luke to see
+that his brow had cleared.
+
+Then suddenly some instinct, coming she knew not whence, and leading
+to consequences affecting their three lives, made her introduce the
+two men.
+
+"Mr. Carr," she said, "Mr. FitzHenry.  You may be able to get each
+other partners.  Besides, you have an interest in common."
+
+The two men bowed.
+
+"Are you a sailor?" inquired Luke, almost pleasantly.  With Willie
+Carr it was difficult to be stiff and formal.
+
+"Not I; but I'm interested in shipping--not the navy, you know--
+merchant service.  I'm something in the City, like the young man on
+the omnibus, eh?"
+
+"I'm in the merchant service," answered Luke.
+
+"Ah!  What ship?"
+
+"The Croonah."
+
+"Croonah," repeated Carr, hastily scribbling his name on Agatha's
+programme.  "Fine ship; I know her well by name.  Know 'em all on
+paper, you know.  I'm an insurance man--what they call a doctor--
+Lloyd's and all that; missing ships, overdue steamers, hedging and
+dodging, and the inner walks of marine insurance--that's yours
+truly.  Croonah's a big value, _I_ know."
+
+He looked up keenly over Agatha's engagement card.  The look was not
+quite in keeping with his bluff and open manners.  Moreover, a man
+who is, so to speak, not in keeping with himself is one who requires
+watching.
+
+"Yes, she is a fine ship," answered Luke, with a momentary thought
+of the Terrific.
+
+"Tell me," went on Carr, confidentially plucking Luke's sleeve,
+"when she is going to the bottom, and I'll do a line for you--make
+your fortune for you.  You'd not be the first man who has come to
+me, with his hair hardly dry, for a cheque."
+
+Luke laughed and went away in answer to Mrs. Harrington's beckoning
+finger.
+
+Fitz was coming towards Agatha and her companion.
+
+"Holloa!" exclaimed Carr, "I'm blowed if here is not a second
+edition of the same man."
+
+"His brother," explained Agatha, who saw Fitz coming, although she
+was apparently looking the other way.
+
+"Royal Navy," muttered Carr.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I'm off.  Can't get on with Royal Navy men, somehow."
+
+With a jovial nod and something remarkably near a wink, Willie Carr
+left her, shouldering his way through the crowd with that good-
+natured boisterousness of manner which is accepted by the world for
+honesty.
+
+Agatha was looking the other way when Fitz came to her, and he was
+forced to touch her and repeat his desire to be accorded a dance
+before she became aware of his proximity.
+
+"Certainly," she answered rather carelessly, "if you want one.  I--
+"--she paused with infinite skill and looked down at her own dress--
+"I thought I had displeased you."
+
+Fitz looked slightly surprised.
+
+"What an absurd thing to think!" he said rather lamely.
+
+She glanced up with pert coquetry.
+
+"Then it was only oblivion or indifference."
+
+"What was only oblivion or indifference?" he asked, still smiling as
+he compared cards.
+
+"Your very obvious delay in coming," she answered.  "Considering
+that we have known each other since we were children, it is only
+natural that I should want to dance with you."
+
+"Considering that we have known each other since we were children,"
+he said, repeating her words and tone, "may I have a third?"
+
+"Yes," with a frank nod.  "And"--she paused, and looking round saw
+Luke going away in the opposite direction with Mrs. Harrington--"and
+will you take me to have some coffee now?  I am engaged for this
+dance, but no matter."
+
+Fitz gave her his arm and turned to hitch his sword higher.  He made
+sure that the blade was well home, shutting in the little red spot
+of gathering rust--a tear.
+
+When they had at length passed through the eager crowd and found a
+resting-place in a smaller room, Agatha looked up at Fitz as he
+handed her her coffee, and did not pretend to hide the admiration
+with which she regarded him.
+
+"You know," she said, "you are a great favourite with Mrs.
+Harrington."
+
+"She is always very kind to me."
+
+Fitz was a difficult person to gossip with by reason of his quiet
+directness of manner.  He had a way of abruptly finishing his speech
+without the usual lowering of the voice.  And it is just that small
+drop of half a tone that invites further confidence.  In such small
+matters as these lies the secret of conversational success, and by
+such trivial tricks of the tongue we are daily and hourly deceived.
+The man or the woman who lowers the tone at the end of speech defers
+to the listener's opinion, and usually receives it.  The manner with
+which Fitz broke off led his listener to believe that he was not
+attending to the conversation.  Agatha therefore baited her hook
+more heavily.
+
+"Like many women, she thinks that sailors are superior to the rest
+of mankind," she said, with just enough lightness of tone to be
+converted into a screen if necessary.  But she heaved a little sigh
+before she drank her coffee.
+
+Fitz had not decided whether all this referred to himself or to
+Luke.  He hoped that Agatha had, so to speak, brought her guns to
+bear upon him, because of himself he was sure, of Luke he was
+doubtful.  As a matter of curiosity he pursued the conversation.
+
+"And you," he said, "look upon such mistaken persons with the
+mingled pity and contempt that they deserve?"
+
+"No," she answered, with audacious calmness, as she rose and passed
+before him; "for I think the same."
+
+She cleverly deprived him of the opportunity of answering, and
+pushed her way through the crowd alone, allowing him to follow.
+
+Before she danced with him again, she danced with Luke, and her
+humour seemed to have undergone a change.
+
+There are some men who, like salmon, never go back.  They push on,
+and that which they have gained they hold to though it cost them
+their lives.  Luke FitzHenry was one of these, and Agatha found that
+in the London ball-room she could take back nothing that she had
+given on board the Croonah.  Luke, it is to be presumed, had old-
+fashioned theories which have fallen into disuse in these practical
+modern days wherein we flirt for one night only, for a day, for a
+week, according to convenience.  He could not lay aside the voyage
+to Malta and that which occurred then as a matter of the past; and
+Agatha, surprised and at a loss, did not seem to know how to make
+him do so.
+
+She learnt with a new wonder that the rest of this ball--namely,
+that part of his programme which did not refer to her, the dances he
+was to dance with partners other than herself--counted as nothing.
+For him this ball was merely herself.  There was not another woman
+in the room--for him.  He told her this and other things.  Moreover,
+the sound of it was quite new to her.  For the modern young man does
+not make serious love to such women as Agatha Ingham-Baker.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.  THE COUNT STANDS BY.
+
+     La discretion d'un homme est d'autant plus grande qu'on lui
+demande davantage.
+
+"I want you to ask me to dinner!"
+
+The Count de Lloseta bowed as he made this remark, and looked at his
+companion with a smile.
+
+At times Mrs. Harrington gave way to a momentary panic in respect to
+Cipriani de Lloseta--when she was not feeling very well, perhaps.
+Her situation seemed to be somewhat that of a commander holding an
+impregnable position against a cunning foe.  For every position of
+such a nature is impenetrable only so long as it can meet and defy
+each new engine of warfare that is brought against it.  And one day
+the fatal engine is invented.
+
+Mrs. Harrington looked into his face with a flicker in her drawn
+grey eyes.  Then she gave a little laugh which was not quite free
+from uneasiness.
+
+"Why?" she asked sardonically.  "Have you fallen in love with some
+one at last?"
+
+She knew that this taunt would hurt him.  Besides, she liked to
+throw it at the memory of a woman whom she had hated--Cipriani de
+Lloseta's dead wife.
+
+"I should like to be of your party to-night," he said quietly.
+
+She gave another scornful laugh, with that ring of malice in it
+which thrills in the voice of some elderly women when they speak of
+young girls.
+
+"Eve is to be of our party to-night," she said.  "Ah--that would be
+too absurd--a new Adam!  You!  But, mind you, Agatha will be here
+too.  You will have to be careful how you play your cards, Don Juan!
+However, we dine at eight, and I shall be glad to see you."
+
+De Lloseta took up his hat and stick.  With Mrs. Harrington, and
+with no one else perhaps in London, he still observed the stiff
+Spanish manner.  He bowed without offering to shake hands, and left
+her.
+
+Mrs. Harrington--cold, calculating, essentially worldly--looked at
+the closed door with deep speculation in her eyes.  They were hard
+eyes, such as are only to be seen in a woman's face; for an old man
+has usually picked up a little charity somewhere on the road through
+life.
+
+Then she looked at a hundred-pound note which he had tossed across
+the table to her with a silent Catalonian contempt earlier in the
+proceedings.
+
+"I thought he was rather easy to manage," she said, examining the
+note.  "I thought he wanted something.  He has paid this--for his
+dinner."
+
+The Count moreover appeared to consider the entertainment cheap at
+the price, if his manner was to be relied upon.  For he entered the
+drawing-room at eight o'clock the same evening with an unusually
+pleasant air of anticipatory enjoyment.  He shook hands quite gaily
+with Mrs. Ingham-Baker, who bridled stoutly, and thought that he was
+a very distinguished-looking man despite his dark airs.  He received
+Agatha's careless nod and shake of the hand with a murmured
+politeness; with Eve he shook hands in silence.  Then he turned
+rather suddenly upon Fitz and held out his hand gravely.
+
+"I congratulate you," he said.  "When I last had the pleasure of
+seeing you, I did not suspect that I was entertaining a great man
+unawares--you were too humble."
+
+Fitz involuntarily glanced towards Eve, knowing that the speaker had
+a second meaning.  Eve was watching the Count rather curiously, as
+if wondering how he would greet Fitz.  Every one in the room was
+looking at the Count de Lloseta; for this quiet-spoken Spaniard was
+a distinct factor in the life of each one of them.
+
+They fell to talking of commonplace matters, and presently Mrs.
+Harrington rustled in.  The servants were only awaiting her arrival
+to announce that dinner was ready.
+
+She looked round.
+
+"We are short of men," she said.  "We miss Luke, do we not?"
+
+She looked straight at Agatha, who returned her stare with audacious
+imperturbability.  It was only Luke's presence that unsteadied her.
+When he was away, she could hold her own against the world.
+
+"I have never seen Luke," said Eve to the Count, who had been
+commanded to offer her his arm.  "I am so sorry to have missed him."
+
+Agatha, who was in front, beneath them on the stairs, turned and
+looked up at her with a strange smile.  She either did not heed the
+Count, or she undervalued his powers of observation.
+
+"You would undoubtedly have liked him," said the Spaniard.
+
+At the table there was considerable arranging of the seats, and
+finally De Lloseta was placed at one side with Mrs. Ingham-Baker,
+while the two girls sat side by side opposite to them.
+
+Fitz was at the foot of the table.
+
+In the course of conversation the Spaniard leant across and said to
+Agatha -
+
+"Have you seen this month's Commentator, Miss Ingham-Baker?"
+
+An unaccountable silence fell upon the assembled guests.  Eve
+Challoner's face turned quite white.  Her eyes were lowered to her
+plate.  No one looked at her except the Count, and his glance was
+momentary.
+
+"Yes--and of course I have read the Spanish sketch.  I suppose every
+one in London has!  It makes me want to go to Spain."
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker bridled and glanced at the Spaniard.  Agatha might
+be a countess yet--a foreign one, but still a countess.  Fitz was
+looking at De Lloseta.  He naturally concluded that it was he who
+had written the article.  He was still watching his face when the
+Spaniard turned to him and said -
+
+"And you, Fitz?  You know something about the matter too!"
+
+And Eve Challoner betrayed herself completely.  No one happened to
+be looking at her except Cipriani de Lloseta, and he saw that not
+only had she written the celebrated articles, but that she loved
+Fitz.  Fitz's opinion was the only one worth hearing.  In her
+anxiety to hear it, she quite forgot to guard her secret.
+
+"Yes," answered Fitz, wondering what De Lloseta was leading up to.
+"I have read them both, of course.  I hope there are more.  The man
+knows what he is writing about."
+
+"He does," said the Count, smiling across the table at Eve.
+
+The girl was moistening her lips, which seemed suddenly to have
+become dry and feverish.  Her hands were trembling.  She had
+evidently been terribly afraid of the opinion so innocently asked by
+the Spaniard.
+
+De Lloseta changed the subject at once.  He had found out all that
+he wanted to know, and more.  He had no intention of forcing a
+confidence upon Eve.
+
+The burthen of the conversation fell upon his shoulders.  Fitz, no
+great talker at any time, was markedly quiet.  He had nothing to
+offer for the general delectation.  His remarks upon all subjects
+mooted were laconic and valueless.  The duties as temporary host
+occupied him for the moment, and his thoughts were obviously
+elsewhere.  His attitude towards Eve had been friendly, but rather
+reserved.  There was no suggestion of sulkiness, but on the other
+hand he had failed to take advantage of one or two opportunities
+which she had given him of referring to the past and to any mutual
+obligations or common interests they had had therein.  It happened
+that Agatha had heard her give him these openings, and had noticed
+his lack of enterprise.
+
+Agatha Ingham-Baker had long before conceived a strange suspicion--
+namely, that Eve and Fitz loved each other.  She had absolutely
+nothing to base her suspicions upon, not so much even as the gossips
+of Majorca.  And nevertheless her suspicions throve, as such do, and
+grew into conviction.
+
+Agatha had come down early to the drawing-room on purpose to
+establish her right over Fitz.  She found De Lloseta in the hall,
+and he followed her into the room.  Whenever she attempted to
+demonstrate her right to the attention of the only young man present
+by one of those little glances or words with which women hurt each
+other, De Lloseta seemed to step in, intercepting with his dark
+smile.  At dinner, when Fitz was absent-minded, Agatha managed to
+show the others that she alone could follow him into the land of his
+reflections and call him back from thence.  But on several
+occasions, when she was about to turn to him with a smile which was
+especially reserved for certain young men under certain
+circumstances, Cipriani de Lloseta spoke to her and spoilt the small
+manoeuvre.
+
+Eve saw it all.  She saw more than the acute Spaniard.  Firstly,
+because she was a woman.  Secondly, because she loved Fitz.
+Thirdly, because the inken curse was hers in a small degree, and
+people who dabble in ink often wade deep into human nature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.  A VOYAGE.
+
+     And hence one master passion in the breast,
+     Like Aaron's serpent, swallows all the rest.
+
+Life is, after all, a matter of habit.  In those families where
+rapid consumption is hereditary, the succeeding generations seem to
+get into the habit of dying early.  They take it, without complaint,
+as a matter of course.  Sailors and other persons who lead a rough
+and hazardous life seem also to acquire this philosophy of
+existence.  Luke FitzHenry went to sea again on the day appointed
+for the Croonah to leave London, without so much as a snarl at Fate.
+
+It was a great wrench to him to leave Agatha again so soon, in the
+first full force of his passion.  But he left her almost happily.
+His love for her was rising up and filling his whole existence.  And
+it is not those lives that are frittered away in a thousand pastimes
+that are happy.  It is the strong life wholly absorbed by one great
+interest, be it love or be it merely money-making.
+
+Luke had hitherto been rather an aimless man.  He was a brilliant
+sailor, not because he set himself to the task, but merely because
+seamanship was born in him, together with a dogged steadiness of
+nerve and a complete fearlessness.  It was so easy to be a good
+sailor that he had not even the satisfaction of having to make an
+effort.  His heart was empty.  He had indeed the sea, but his love
+of it was unconscious.  Away from it, he was ill at ease; on its
+breast, he was not actively happy--he was merely at home.  But he
+had no career.  He had no great prize to aim for, and his combative
+nature required one.  He had no career to make, for he was already
+near the summit of the humble ladder on which Fate had set his feet.
+
+Then came Agatha, and the empty heart was filled with a dangerous
+suddenness.
+
+The pain which this parting caused him had something of pleasure in
+it.  There are some men and many women who doubt love unless it
+bring actual pain with it.  Luke had always mistrusted fate, and had
+love brought happiness with it he would probably have doubted its
+genuineness.  He hugged all his doubts, his jealousies, his
+passionate thoughts to himself.  He had nothing to cling to.  Agatha
+had never told him that she loved him.  But she was for him so
+entirely apart from all other women that it seemed necessary that he
+also should not be as other men for her.  Not much for a lover to
+live upon during four or five months!
+
+Agatha had given him a photograph of herself--a fashionable picture
+in an affected pose in evening dress--but she had absolutely refused
+to write.  This photograph Luke put into a frame, and as soon as the
+Croonah was out of dock he hung it up in his little cabin.  His
+servant saw it and recognised the fair passenger of a former voyage,
+but he knew his place and his master too well to offer any comment.
+
+Unlike the ordinary young man, whose thoughts are lightly turned to
+love, Luke was no worse a sailor for his self-absorption.  All his
+care, all his keen, fearless judgment were required; for the Croonah
+ran through a misty channel into a boisterous Atlantic.
+
+He stood motionless at his post, as was his wont, keen and alert for
+the moment, but living in the past.  He saw again Mrs. Harrington's
+drawing-room as he had last seen it, with Agatha sitting in a low
+chair near the fire, while Mrs. Harrington wrote at her desk, and
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker read the Times.
+
+"I have come," he remembered saying, "to bid you good-bye."
+
+He heard again the rustle of Mrs. Ingham-Baker's newspaper, and
+again he saw the look in Agatha's eyes as they met his.  He would
+remember that look to the end of his life; he was living on it now.
+Agatha, in her rather high-pitched society tones, was the first to
+speak.
+
+"If I were a sailor," she said, "I would never say good-bye.  It is
+better to drop in and pay a call; at the end one might casually
+mention the words."
+
+"Oh! we grow accustomed to it," Luke answered.
+
+"Do you?" the girl inquired, with an enigmatical smile, and her
+answer was in his eyes.  She did not want him to grow accustomed to
+saying farewell to her.
+
+Luke FitzHenry was not inclined to sociability--the stronger sort of
+man rarely is.  On board the Croonah he was usually considered
+morose and self absorbed.  He did his duty, and in this was second
+to no man on board; but he was content to get the passengers to
+their destination, looking upon the Croonah as a mere conveyance for
+a certain number of chattering, gossiping, mischief-making live-
+stock.  He utterly failed in his social duties; he did not cultivate
+the art of making his ship a sort of floating "hydro".
+
+The boisterous weather kept the decks fairly select until Gibraltar
+had been left behind in the luminous haze that hangs over the mouth
+of the Mediterranean in a westerly breeze.  But in the smoother
+waters of the Southern seas the passengers plucked up courage, and
+one morning at breakfast Luke perceived a tall, heavy-shouldered man
+nodding vigorously, and wiping his mouth with a napkin, which he
+subsequently waved with friendly jocularity.
+
+"Morning--morning!" he cried.
+
+"Good morning," replied Luke, passing to his seat at the after-end
+of the saloon.  He had recognised the man at once, although he had
+only exchanged a few words with him in a crowded ball-room.
+Everything connected with Agatha, however remotely, seemed to
+engrave itself indelibly on his mind.  This was Willie Carr, the man
+to whom Agatha had introduced him at the naval orphanage ball.
+Willie Carr was on board the Croonah, evidently quite at home, and
+bound for India, for he was seated at the Indian table.
+
+It was not necessary for Luke to make inquiries about this
+passenger, because his brother officers soon began to speak of him.
+By some means Carr made himself popular among the officers, and
+gradually began to enjoy privileges denied to his fellow passengers.
+He frequently visited the engine-room, and was always to be seen
+after meals in, or in the neighbourhood of, the smoking-room, in
+conversation with one or other of the Croonah's officers, who were
+generally found to be smoking Carr's cigars.
+
+Despite many obvious and rather noisy overtures of friendship, Luke
+FitzHenry held aloof until the Aden light was left behind.  He
+succeeded in limiting his intercourse to an exchange of passing
+remarks on the weather until the Croonah had rounded Pointe de Galle
+and was heading northwards.  Then arose circumstances which brought
+them together, and possibly served Willie Carr's deliberate purpose.
+
+Carr was travelling without his wife--he was the sort of man who
+does travel without his wife.  She, poor woman, had made one initial
+mistake, namely, in marrying him, and such mistakes are sometimes
+paid for by a life of atonement to the gods.  She remained at home
+to care for an ever-increasing family on a small housekeeping
+allowance, which was not always paid.
+
+This wife was the only point in his favour which had presented
+itself to Luke's mind, for the latter resented a certain tone of
+easy familiarity, which Agatha seemed to take as a matter of course.
+
+Luke was afraid of being questioned about Agatha, and he therefore
+kept Carr at a respectful distance.  He harboured no personal
+dislike towards the man, whose bluff and honest manner made him
+popular among his fellows.
+
+It was the evening of the first day in the Bay of Bengal that a
+steamer passed the Croonah, running south, and flying a string of
+signals.  The Croonah replied, and the homeward-bound vessel
+disappeared in the gathering twilight with her code flags still
+flying.
+
+"What did she say?" asked the passengers.
+
+"Nothing," replied the officers; "only the weather.  It is the
+change of the monsoon."
+
+At dinner the captain was remarkably grave; he left the table early,
+having eaten little.  The officers were reticent, as was their wont.
+Luke FitzHenry, it was remarked and remembered afterwards, alone
+appeared to be in good spirits.
+
+After dinner a busybody in the shape of a too intelligent young
+coffee-planter, who possessed an aneroid barometer, brought that
+instrument to the smoking-room with a scared face.  The needle was
+deflected to a part of the dial which the intelligent young planter
+had hitherto considered to be merely ornamental and not intended for
+practical use.  His elders and betters told him to put it away and
+not to tell the ladies.  Then they continued smoking; but they knew
+that they had just seen such a barometer as few men care to look
+upon.
+
+The word "cyclone" was whispered in one corner of the cabin, and a
+white-moustached general was understood to mutter -
+
+"Damned young fool!" as he pulled at his cheroot.
+
+The whisperer did not hear the remark, and went on to give further
+information on atmospheric disturbances.  Suddenly the field-officer
+jumped to his feet.
+
+"Look here, sir!" he cried.  "If we are in for a cyclone, I trust
+that we know how to behave as men--and die as men, if need be!  But
+don't let us have any whispering in corners, like a lot of
+schoolgirls.  We are in the care of good men, and all we have to do
+is to obey orders, and--damn it, sir!--to remember we're
+Englishmen!"
+
+The general walked out of the smoking-saloon, and the first sight
+that greeted his eyes was Luke FitzHenry, quick, keen, and
+supernaturally calm, standing over a group of Malay sailors who were
+hard at work getting in awnings.  The white-haired soldier stood and
+watched with the grim silence which he had showed to death before
+now.  He was of the Indian army.  He had led the black man to
+victory and death, and he knew to a nerve the sensitive Asiatic
+organisation.  He saw that it was good and not for the first time he
+noted the sheep-like dependence with which the black men grouped
+themselves round their white leader, watching his face, taking their
+cue in expression, in attitude, even in their feelings from him.
+
+"Good man," muttered the general to himself.
+
+He stood there alone while the ship was stripped of every awning,
+while the decks were cleared of all that hamper which makes the
+passenger an encumbrance at sea.  There was no shouting, no
+confusion, no sign of fear.  In a marvellously short time the broad
+decks were lying bare and clear, all loose things were stowed away
+or made fast, and the Croonah stood ready for her great fight.
+
+All the while an arc of black cloud had been growing on the horizon.
+There was not a breath of wind.  From the engine-rooms the thud of
+the piston-rods came throbbing up with a singular distinctness.  The
+arc of cloud had risen halfway to the meridian.  There were streaks
+in it--streaks of yellow on black.  Far away to the north, at the
+point of contact with the horizon, a single waterspout rose like a
+black pillar from sea to cloud.  Dwellers in the cool and temperate
+zones would have thought that the end of the world was about to
+come.  Men, standing quite still, felt the drops of perspiration
+trickling beneath their ears.  The air taken into the lungs seemed
+powerless to expand them.  The desire to take a deeper breath was
+constant and oppressive.
+
+A quartermaster brought a message to the general that he must go
+below or else come up to the lower bridge.  He could not stay where
+he was.  The captain said that the cyclone might break at any
+moment.  The old soldier nodded, and made his way to the lower
+bridge.  Before he had been there long he was joined by Carr, who
+carried a mackintosh over his arm.  The two men nodded.  The general
+rather liked Carr.  He was a Harrovian, and the general's son was at
+Harrow.
+
+"Going to see it out on deck?" he inquired.
+
+"Rather.  I'm not going to be drowned like a rat in a trap!" replied
+Carr, jovial still, and brave.
+
+Luke came to the bridge and took up his position by the side of the
+captain.  No one spoke.
+
+From the distant horizon--from the north where the waterspout still
+was--a long groan floated over the water.  There was a green line on
+the black surface of the ocean, dark green flecked with white; it
+was spreading over the sea, and coming towards them.  Luke turned
+and said one word to the quartermaster.  The man went to the
+wheelhouse and brought out three long black oilskin coats--two for
+the captain and Luke, the other for himself.
+
+The groan, like that of an animal in pain, was repeated.  It seemed
+farther off.  Then a sound like the escape of steam from an engine
+came apparently from the sky.
+
+Luke said something to the captain, and pointed with his right hand.
+They consulted together in a whisper, and the captain made a signal
+to the two steersmen motionless in the wheelhouse.  The well-greased
+chains ran smoothly, and the great black prow of the Croonah crept
+slowly round the horizon pointing out to sea, away from the land.
+Ceylon lay astern of them in the darkness which was almost like
+night.
+
+The captain and Luke stood side by side on the little bridge, far
+above the deck.  They had exchanged their gold-braided caps for
+sou'westers.  The outline of their black forms was just
+distinguishable against the sky.  They were looking straight ahead
+into the yellow streaks, out over the flecked sea.  And not a breath
+of wind stirred the leaden atmosphere.
+
+Looking down on the broad decks, it would seem at first that they
+were deserted, but as the eye became accustomed to the gloom, men
+standing like shadows could be perceived here and there--at their
+posts--waiting.
+
+All the skylights had been doubly tarpaulined.  Some of them had
+been strengthened with battens lashed transversely over the canvas.
+All that mortal brain could devise mortal hand had done.  The rest
+was with God.
+
+The decks were quite dark, for the skylights were covered, even
+those of the engine-room, and the men at work down there in the
+stifling heat knew not what the next moment might bring.  They had
+nothing to guide them as to the moment when the hurricane would
+strike the ship.  For the last five minutes they had been holding on
+to their life-rails with both hands, expecting to be thrown among
+the machinery at every second.
+
+Still there was no breath of wind.  The darkness was less intense.
+A yellow glow seemed to be behind the cloud.
+
+Then a strange feeling of being drawn upward came to all, and strong
+men gasped for breath.  It was only for a moment.  But the sensation
+was that the air was being sucked up to the sky, leaving a vacuum on
+the face of the waters.
+
+Suddenly the captain's voice startled the night, rising trumpet-like
+above the hiss of the steam.
+
+"Stand BY!" he cried.
+
+Luke looked down to the lower bridge.
+
+"You had better hold on to something," he called, and as he spoke
+the hurricane struck the Croonah.  It can only be described as a
+pushing smack.  She rolled slowly over before it, and it seemed that
+she would never stop.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.  A GREAT FIGHT.
+
+     Who knows?  The man is proven by the hour.
+
+The sea seemed to rise up and fall on the disabled ship with a wild
+fury.  There was a strange suggestion of passion in every wave as it
+crashed over the bulwarks.  In the roar of the hurricane there was a
+faint sound of crackling wood.  The deck was at an angle of thirty.
+The port boats on their davits were invisible; they were under
+water.  If the Croonah righted quickly those boats would break up
+like old baskets.
+
+The two men on the lower bridge stood on the uprights of the rail,
+leaning against the deck as against a wall.  The crackling sound
+like breaking matchwood seemed to come from above.  Carr looked up
+and saw the captain and Luke at the wheel.  The wheelhouse had
+collapsed like a card house; it had simply been blown away, and one
+of the helmsmen with it.  The other was lying huddled up at the
+lower end of the narrow bridge.
+
+For a moment the darkness lifted and the survivors saw a weird
+sight.  One of the starboard boats, attached to the davit by only
+one fall, was held by the wind like a flag straight out over the
+deck.  Already two men were clambering to the upper bridge to take
+the place of the helmsmen who were dead.  Relieved from the wheel,
+Luke dragged himself up to the ladder leading from the upper to the
+lower deck.  A few moments later they saw him cutting with a hatchet
+at the ropes holding the boat to the davit.  There were four, for it
+was a heavy boat, held by a double block.  He cut two at a stroke:
+the others ran out instantly.  The boat disappeared to leeward like
+a runaway hat, and fell with a splash into the foaming sea.
+
+The Croonah seemed to feel the relief.  She rose a little to
+windward, but her lee-rail was still under water.  Down in the
+scuppers, in the tangle of ropes and splintered wood, sundry dark
+forms, looking more like bundles of dirty rags than anything else,
+rolled and tossed helplessly.  These were dead and drowning men.
+Already the European sailors were at work, some cutting away useless
+top-hamper, others attempting to drag the terror-stricken Malays to
+a place of comparative safety.  Luke FitzHenry took command of these
+men, as was his duty, working like one of them, with infinite
+daring.  He could only communicate with his captain by signs, speech
+being impossible.  It was a seaman's fight.  Each man did that which
+seemed to him expedient for the safety of the ship.  The Croonah was
+fully equipped for fine weather--for cleaning brasses and swabbing
+decks and bending awnings; but for bad weather--notably for a
+cyclone--she was perilously undermanned.  Half of the native crew
+were paralysed by fear, many were killed, others drowned from a mere
+incapacity to hold on.
+
+The other officers of the ship had their hands more than full.  The
+doctor was below in the saloon surrounded by a babel of shrieking
+women and white-faced men; the engineers were on watch at their
+deadly posts in the heart of the ship.
+
+Carr turned and clambered down the iron ladder to the upper deck.
+He was half a sailor and quite an Englishman.  Moreover he came from
+Harrow, where they teach a certain bull-dog courage.
+
+Luke, working half blinded by spray and salt water, presently found
+a strong man working at his side.  Together they cut away the
+submerged boats, standing to their waists in water, at infinite
+peril of their lives; together they made their way forward to help
+the chief officer and his devoted gang, who were cutting away the
+foremast and the wreckage of forward boats.
+
+Through the long hours of the night these dauntless men worked
+unceasingly, and--incongruous practical details--the stewards
+brought them food at stated intervals, while two men served out
+spirits all the while.  Slowly, inch by inch, they righted the ship,
+bringing her stubborn prow gradually into the wind; and all the
+while the engines throbbed, all the while the grimy stokers
+shovelled coal into the furnaces, all the while the engineers stood
+and watched their engines.
+
+Dawn broke on a terrific sea and a falling wind.  The night was over
+and the dread Bay had had her thousand lives and more, for a cyclone
+simply wipes out the native craft like writing on a slate.  The
+Croonah had been right through the corner of the worst cyclone of a
+generation.  Luke crawled back to the bridge where the captain
+stood, as he had stood all night, motionless.  Sheer skill and a
+great experience had pulled the Croonah through.
+
+When the danger was past those who were on deck saw a man in shirt
+and trousers only, his grey hair ruffled, his clothes glued to his
+limbs by perspiration, emerge from the bowels of the ship.  He came
+on deck, passed by those who scarce knew him without his gold braid,
+and slowly climbed the ladder to the bridge.  There, in the early
+morning light, the two men who had saved three hundred lives--the
+captain and the chief engineer--silently shook hands.
+
+"I had to keep you down there for the safety of the ship," said the
+captain gruffly.
+
+"All right, old man, I knew that."
+
+The old engineer turned and looked fore and aft over the wrecked
+decks with a curious smile as if he had come back from another
+world.
+
+While they stood there the saloon doors were opened and a haggard
+row of faces peered out.  A quarter-master held the passengers back,
+for the decks were unsafe.  Railings and bulwarks were gone, boats
+smashed, awning stanchions twisted and bent.  No landsmen could be
+trusted to move safely amid such confusion.
+
+And all the while the engines throbbed, and the Croonah held proudly
+on her course to the north--battered, torn, and sore stricken, yet a
+victor.
+
+After changing their clothes, Luke and Carr breakfasted together at
+the after-end of the second officer's table in the saloon.  With a
+certain humour the captain allowed of no relaxation in the
+discipline of the ship.  The breakfast bell was rung at the usual
+time, the meal was served with the usual profusion, even the menus
+were written as carefully as ever; and some good ladies opined that
+the captain must be a godless man, because forsooth he did not
+cringe beneath the wing of the passing Angel of Death.
+
+"I am glad I saw that," said Carr, neat and clean, hearty and
+smiling as usual.
+
+Luke looked up from a generous plate.  He thought that Carr was
+indulging in bravado, but he relinquished this opinion when he saw
+the man's face and his helping of bacon and eggs.  Carr seemed to
+have enjoyed the cyclone, as he had no doubt enjoyed many a game of
+football in his youth, and many a spin across country later.  For
+this man kept his hunters.  He was moved thereto by that form of
+self-respect which urges some men to live like gentlemen, to, as
+they express it, "do themselves well," whether their mere monetary
+circumstances allow of it or no; and some one usually pays for these
+philosophers--that is the annoying part of it.
+
+"By gad!  I didn't think it could blow like that, though!" Carr went
+on, with his mouth full.
+
+"I don't think it can often," replied Luke.  He could not help
+liking this man, despite his first prejudice against him.  Besides,
+they had stood shoulder to shoulder, with death around them, and
+such moments draw differing men together.  It is the required touch
+of Nature, this same death, which frightens us before it comes and
+seems so gentle when it is here.
+
+"I always wanted to see a cyclone," went on Carr conversationally,
+"and now I'm satisfied.  I have had enough.  I shouldn't have cared
+for more.  Pass, cyclones!"
+
+"It is not many men who have your laudable thirst for experience,"
+said Luke.  "It is rather a strenuous form of pleasure."
+
+"Pleasure!" answered Carr, with one of his sharp glances.
+"Pleasure, be d--d!  It's business, sir, business.  I mean to make
+money out of cyclones."
+
+"How?  Bottle them up and make them turn a windmill?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+Carr turned round to make sure that he could not be overheard.
+
+"No, sir.  Your idea is not bad in the main, though hardly
+practicable.  No.  I know a dodge worth two of that!  I told you
+before that I am in the marine insurance line.  Now, the funny part
+of the marine insurance line is that the majority of the men engaged
+in it do not know their business.  Now I propose to teach these
+gentlemen their business."
+
+"Will they thank you for it?" asked Luke.
+
+"They'll pay me for it, which is better, by a long chalk!  Ha, ha!
+Butter, please."
+
+"And what have cyclones got to do with it?"
+
+Again one of the sharp glances which sat so strangely on Carr's open
+countenance.
+
+"I understand there is a science of cyclones," he said quietly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Which means that you chaps knew what was coming forty-eight hours
+ago?"
+
+"Yes," replied Luke.
+
+"That that steamer flying signals yesterday was talking to you about
+it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that when you got into it you knew exactly whereabout you were
+in it; where the centre was, and which was the shortest way out of
+it, to get clear away from the vortex and beyond the axis line, so
+as not to get into it again?"
+
+"Yes.  You're quite a Fitzroy."
+
+Carr winked cheerily.
+
+"And all this is a certainty?"
+
+"A dead certainty," replied Luke.  "It is a science."
+
+Carr laid down his knife and fork.
+
+"Suppose," he said, "that the next cyclone sends forty ships to
+kingdom come, and I've got a line of five hundred or a thousand
+insured on every one of them.  I'll study these jolly old cyclones.
+It will be easy enough to know about when they'll be coming.  When
+one is about I'll have a line on every ship at sea between Colombo
+and Penang--do you see?  I'll get a man on the coast here to watch
+the weather.  When there's a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal he will
+wire me home one word, 'Milksop,' or 'Spongecake,' or something soft
+and innocent.  I'll do the rest, my boy."
+
+Luke was only pretending to eat.  The desire to make money was
+strong upon him--as indeed were all his desires--it was almost a
+passion; for money meant Agatha, and Agatha had grown to be the one
+absorbing passion of his heart.  Agatha had been at the back of the
+superhuman fight which he had waged all night against death.  Agatha
+was behind Carr's words.  The thought of her was tempting him
+through the man's arguments.
+
+"But what will you insure?" he asked.
+
+"Profit," replied Carr, in a whisper.  "It is done every day--policy
+proof of interest--the fools!"
+
+"What is policy proof of interest?"
+
+"It means that they admit your insurance to be valid, whether you
+have anything on board the ship or not.  It is not legal, but they
+know it when they sign the policy; and they know that it would ruin
+them if they refused to pay an 'honour policy.'  I tell you they
+don't know their business and they have no combination.  They all
+distrust each other, and tell lies to each other about their profits
+and their losses.  If I insure profit I have only to say that I
+shall lose money if the ship does not reach her destination and
+deliver her cargo safely.  The cargo may be mine; I may be buying it
+or selling it; no one can tell, and the underwriters don't ask.
+They pocket their premium, and if they have to pay, and think they
+have been rooked, they keep it to themselves, because each man is
+against his neighbour."
+
+"But do they know nothing about cyclones?" inquired Luke.
+
+"My good sir, they hardly know the difference between Calcutta and
+Bombay.  Half of them think that a cyclone and a monsoon are the
+same thing, and not one in ten could tell you the difference between
+a brig and a barquentine."
+
+Luke gave a little half-convinced laugh.  The man was so open and
+honest that his arguments had nothing underhand or crafty in them.
+
+"It sounds very simple," he said.
+
+"It is; d--d simple!  So are the underwriters; but that is not our
+business.  You see, FitzHenry, in all commerce there are a certain
+number of fools for the wise men to outwit.  In marine insurance
+there are a large number.  All insurance is nothing but a bet, and
+betting is a matter of intelligence.  We bring more intelligence to
+bear upon it than the other chap, therefore we win."
+
+He helped himself to marmalade with a jaunty hand.  Luke hardly
+noticed the easy transition from "I" to "we."  He had had no
+intention of suggesting a partnership in this easy manner of making
+money, but the partnership seemed to have formed itself.
+
+"But--" Carr paused, holding in the air an emphatic spoon.  "But, my
+boy, we want capital, we want to lay our hands on fifty thousand
+pounds."
+
+"I am afraid I could not lay my hand on fifty thousand pence," said
+Luke.
+
+Carr glanced at him sharply.  There was a little pause while Carr
+ate marmalade and toast.
+
+"Oh yes, you could," he said in a low tone.  "Between us we could
+raise fifty thousand as easy as winking."
+
+As if to demonstrate the facility of the latter, he looked up and
+closed his left eye confidentially.
+
+"You're a sailor," he went on to say, "and a ripping good one at
+that.  You know the perils of the deep, as the parsons say.  It
+wouldn't be hard for you to tell when the Croonah was running into a
+tight place like yesterday.  All you have to do is to wire home one
+word to me.  My telegraphic address is 'Simple, London.'  Say you
+wire home 'Milksop.'  We could fix on 'Milksop'; it sounds so
+innocent!  In twenty-four hours I'd have fifty thousand done on the
+Croonah in London, Glasgow, Liverpool, New York, Paris, and Germany-
+-spread about, you know.  In four or five days the Croonah goes to
+the bottom, and we scoop in, your name never appearing--see?"
+
+There was a little pause.
+
+"See?" repeated Carr, in little more than a whisper.  Luke looked
+up.  He met Carr's eyes and knew that he was dealing with a villain.
+The strange part of it was that he felt no anger.  He could not free
+his mind from the thought of Agatha.  There was one corner of the
+steamer which was almost sacred to him--the little space behind the
+deckhouse where he had held Agatha in his arms for one moment of
+intense happiness--where she told him that she could not be poor.
+
+Carr rose and threw down his table napkin with a certain grand air
+which was his.
+
+"It would be the making of you," he said.  "It is worth thinking
+about."
+
+He threw back his shoulders--a trick common enough with strongly
+built men who incline to stoutness--nodded, and left him.  He passed
+down the length of the saloon, seeking his cigar-case in the pocket
+of his coat, exchanging loud and hearty greetings with those among
+the passengers whom he knew.  He was popular on account of the open
+British frankness which he cultivated, and which is supposed to be
+the outward sign of an honest heart.  He seemed to be thinking of
+his great scheme no longer, but he left Luke to brood over it--to
+try and chase the word "Milksop" from his brain, where it seemed to
+be indelibly engraved.
+
+He left Luke to fight against a great temptation alone and heavily
+handicapped, for Luke FitzHenry was held as in a vice by his
+passionate love for Agatha.  It is not all men who can love.  It is
+only a few who are capable of a deep passion.  This is as rare as
+genius.  A man of genius is usually a failure in all except his own
+special line.  The man who can and does love passionately must be a
+good man indeed if his love do not make a villain of him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.  THE EDITOR'S ROOM.
+
+     The greater man, the greater courtesy.
+
+The Count de Lloseta and John Craik were sitting together in the
+editorial room of the Commentator.
+
+It was a quiet room, with double windows and a permanent odour of
+tobacco smoke.  An empty teacup stood on the table by John Craik's
+elbow.
+
+"Name of God!" Cipriani de Lloseta had ejaculated when he saw it.
+"At eleven o'clock in the morning!"
+
+"Must stir the brain up," was the reply.
+
+"I would not do it with a teaspoon," De Lloseta had answered, and
+then he sat down to correct the proof of Eve's fourth article on
+"Spain and Spanish Life."
+
+They had been sitting thus together for half an hour in friendly
+silence, only broken by an occasional high-class Spanish anathema
+hurled at the head of the printer.
+
+"A dog's trade!" ejaculated De Lloseta at last, leaning back and
+throwing down his pen, "a dog's trade, my friend!"
+
+"It is mine," replied Craik, without looking up.  In fiction he was
+celebrated for a certain smartness of dialogue.  His printed
+conversations were pretty displays of social sword-play.  It had
+become a sort of habit with him to thrust and parry quickly; but the
+sudden smile on his lined face, the kindly glance from behind the
+spectacles, always took away the sting and demonstrated that it was
+mere "copy," to fill up the dull columns of life and throw in a
+sparkle here and there.
+
+"Have you finished?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, thank Heaven!  I was not intended for a literary calling.
+That is number four, and I am not paid--I am not paid; there lies
+the sting."
+
+"Number four, yes; two published and two in hand," replied John
+Craik.  His mind was busy elsewhere; it was with the creatures of
+his own imagination, living their lives, rejoicing with them,
+sorrowing with them.
+
+The Count rose and walked gravely to the hearthrug, holding the
+proof-sheets in his hand.
+
+"Number four," he reiterated.  "Will they go on, my friend?"
+
+John Craik looked up sharply.
+
+"No."
+
+"How many more will you accept?"
+
+"Two more at the outside, making six in all.  The public is like a
+greedy child, it must be stopped before it makes itself sick.
+Nausea leaves a lasting distaste for that which preceded it."
+
+The Count nodded.
+
+"And this worldly wisdom--is it the editor or the man who speaks?"
+
+"The editor.  The editor is a man who lives by saying 'No.'"
+
+"And you will say 'No' to any more from this--writer's pen?"
+
+"To any more about Spain I most certainly shall."
+
+The Count reflected.  What little light the London day afforded fell
+full upon his long narrow face, upon the pointed Velasquez chin, the
+receding iron-grey hair brushed straight back.
+
+"And the fact that the writer is supporting herself and a worn-out
+old uncle by her pen will make no difference?"
+
+John Craik hesitated for a moment.
+
+"Not the least," he then said.  "You seem to know the writer."
+
+"I do, and I am interested in her."
+
+"A lady?"  John Craik was dotting his i's with the contemplativeness
+of artistic finish.
+
+"Essentially so."
+
+"And poor?"
+
+"Yes, and proud as--"
+
+"A Spaniard," suggested John Craik.
+
+"If you will.  It is a vice which has almost become a virtue in
+these democratic days."
+
+John Craik looked up.
+
+"I will do what I can, Lloseta," he said.  "But she is not a great
+writer, and will never become one."
+
+"I know that.  Some day she will become a great lady, or I know
+nothing of them."
+
+Craik was still busy touching up his manuscript.
+
+"I have never seen her," he said.  "But the impression I received
+from her manuscripts is that she is a girl who has lived a simple
+life among a simple people.  She has seen a great deal of nature,
+out-of-door nature, which is pure, and cannot be too deeply studied.
+She has seen very little of human nature, which is not so pure as it
+might be.  That is her chief charm of style, a high-minded purity.
+She does not describe the gutter and think she is writing of the
+street.  By the way, I am expecting her here" (he paused, and looked
+at the clock on the mantelpiece) "in exactly two minutes."
+
+The Count rose quickly and took his hat.  As he extended his hand to
+say "Good-bye" there was a rap at the door.  The discreet youth who
+told John Craik's falsehoods for him came in and handed his master a
+slip of paper with a name written thereon.
+
+Craik read the inscription, crumpled up the paper, and threw it into
+the waste-paper basket.
+
+"In one minute," he said, and the liar withdrew.
+
+Cipriani de Lloseta, with a quiet deliberation which was sometimes
+almost dramatic, stooped over the paper basket and recovered the
+crumpled slip of paper.  He did not unfold it, but held it out,
+crushed up in his closed fist.
+
+"Miss Eve Challoner," he said.
+
+John Craik nodded.
+
+De Lloseta laughed and threw the paper into the fire.
+
+"I must not be seen.  Where do you propose to put me?"
+
+"Go upstairs instead of down," replied John Craik, as if he had been
+asked the same question before.  "Wait on the next landing until you
+hear this door close; you may then escape in safety."
+
+"Thanks--good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+When Eve entered the room, John Craik was writing.  He rose with a
+bow savouring of a politer age than ours, and held out his hand.
+
+"At last," he said, "I have prevailed upon you to come and see me.
+Will you sit down?  The chair is shabby, but great men and women
+have sat in it."
+
+He spoke pleasantly, with his twisted laugh, and when Eve was seated
+he sat slowly, carefully down again.  He was thinking not so much of
+what he was saying as of his hearer.  He saw that Eve was undeniably
+beautiful--the man saw that.  The novelist saw that she was probably
+interesting.  As he had just stated, great women had sat in the same
+chair, and it was John Craik's impulse to save Eve from that same
+greatness.  He had, since a brilliant youth at Oxford, been steeped,
+as it were, in literature.  He had known all the great men and
+women, and he held strong views of his own.  These were probably
+erroneous--many women will think so--but he held to them.  They were
+based on experience, which is not always the case with views
+expressed in print and elsewhere.  John Craik held that greatness is
+not good for women.  That it is not for their own happiness, he
+knew.  That it is not for the happiness of those around them, he
+keenly suspected.  Some of Eve's celebrated predecessors in that
+chair had not quite understood John Craik.  All thought that he was
+not sufficiently impressed--not, that is, so impressed by them as
+they were themselves when they reflected upon their own renown.
+
+He looked at Eve quickly, rubbing his hands together.
+
+"May I, as an old man, ask some impertinent questions?" he inquired,
+with a cheerfulness which sat strangely on the wan face.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why do you write?" he said.  "Take time; answer me after
+reflection."
+
+Eve reflected while the great editor stared into the fire.
+
+"To make money," she answered at last.
+
+He looked up, and saw that she was answering in simple good faith.
+
+"That is right."
+
+He did not tell her that he was sick and tired of the jargon of art
+for art's sake, literature for literature's sake.  He did not tell
+that--practical man of the world that he was--he had no faith in
+literary art; that he believed the power of writing to be a gift and
+nothing else; that the chief art in literature is that which is
+unconscious of itself.
+
+"Do you feel within yourself the makings of a great author?"
+
+Eve laughed, a sudden girlish laugh, which made John Craik reduce
+his estimate of her age by five years.
+
+"No," she answered.
+
+He sat up and looked at her with a kind admiration.
+
+"You are refreshing," he said, "very, especially to a man who has
+seen stout and elderly females sit in that same chair and state
+their conviction that they were destined to be George Eliots or
+Charlotte Brontes, women who had written one improper or irreligious
+novel, which had obtained a certain success in the foolish circles."
+
+"Do you think I have," asked Eve, "the--the makings of an income?"
+
+John Craik reflected.
+
+"A small one," he said bluntly.
+
+"That is all I want."
+
+Craik raised his eyebrows.
+
+"And renown," he said, "do you want that?"
+
+"Not in the least, except for its intrinsic value."
+
+Craik banged his hand down on the arm of his chair and laughed
+aloud.
+
+"This is splendid!" he cried.  "I have never met such a practical
+person.  Then you would be content to work for a sufficient income
+without ever being known to the world?"
+
+"Yes, provided that the work was genuine and not given to me out of
+mere charity."
+
+The editor of the Commentator looked at her gravely.  He had
+suddenly remembered Cipriani de Lloseta.
+
+"Oh, you are proud!" he said.
+
+Eve laughed with a negative shake of the head.
+
+"Not more than other people," she answered.
+
+"Not more than other people.  Well, we will have it so.  And not
+ambitious."
+
+"No, I think not."
+
+"You may thank God for that," said John Craik, half to himself.  "An
+ambitious woman is not a pleasant person."
+
+There was a little pause, during which John Craik rubbed his chin
+reflectively with his bony fingers.
+
+"And now," he said, "that I know something about you, I will tell
+you why I asked you to be good enough to come and see me.  To begin
+with, I am an old man; you can see that for yourself.  I am a martyr
+to rheumatism, and I frequently suffer from asthma, otherwise I
+should have done myself the pleasure of calling on you.  I wanted to
+see you, because lady authors are uncertain creatures.  A large
+majority of them have nothing better to do, and therefore write.
+Others do not care for the money, but they do most decidedly for the
+renown.  The nudge and whisper of society is nectar to them.  Others
+again are brilliant in flashes and dull in long periods.  Few, very
+few are content to work with their pen as their poorer sisters are
+forced to work with their needles.  In that lies the secret of the
+more permanent success of men journalists and men authors.  The
+journalism and the authorship are not the men, but merely the
+business of their lives.  Now will you be content to work hard and
+steadily without any great hope of renown--to work, in fact,
+anonymously for a small but certain income?"
+
+"Yes," answered Eve, without hesitation.
+
+Craik nodded his head gravely and thoughtfully.  He was too deeply
+experienced to fall into the error of thinking that Eve was
+different from other women.  He did not for a moment imagine that he
+had secured in her a permanent subscriber to the Commentator--
+possibly he did not want her as such.  He was merely doing a good
+deed--no new thing to him, although his right hand hardly knew what
+his left was doing.  He liked Eve, he admired her, and was
+interested in her.  Cipriani de Lloseta he was deeply interested in,
+and he knew, with the keen instinct of the novelist, that he was
+being drawn into one of those romances of real life which exists in
+the matter-of-fact nineteenth century atmosphere that we breathe.
+
+So Eve Challoner left John Craik's office an independent woman for
+the time being, and the charity was so deeply hidden that her ever-
+combative pride had failed to detect it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.  THE CURTAIN LOWERS.
+
+     The shadow, cloaked from head to foot,
+     Who keeps the keys of all the creeds.
+
+As she walked back to Grosvenor Gardens, Eve reflected with some
+satisfaction that the Ingham-Bakers had left Mrs. Harrington's
+hospitable roof.  From this shelter they had gone forth into a world
+which is reputed cold, and has nevertheless some shelter still for
+such as are prepared to cringe to the overbearing, to flatter the
+vain, to worship riches.
+
+Eve wanted time to think over her new position, to reflect with
+satisfaction over her new independence, for the Caballero Challoner,
+if he had bequeathed little else, had left to her a very active
+pride.  She knew so little of the world that she never paused to
+wonder why John Craik should have made her a proposal which could
+hardly be beneficial to himself.  She was innocent enough to think
+that the good things of this world are given just where and when
+they are wanted.
+
+Captain Bontnor was the chief object of her thoughts, and she was
+already dreaming of restoring him to Malabar Cottage and his bits of
+things.  So engrossed was she in these reflections, that she noticed
+nothing unusual in the face of the butler who opened the door which
+had shut upon Luke FitzHenry some years before.
+
+"I'm glad you're back, miss," he said gravely.
+
+Something in his tone--cold and correct--caught Eve's attention.
+
+"Why?" she asked, and a consoling knowledge that the Terrific was
+safe in Chatham Dockyard leapt into her mind.
+
+"Mrs. Harrington's been took rather bad, miss."
+
+The man's manner said more than his words.  Eve hurried upstairs to
+Mrs. Harrington's bedroom.  She tapped at the door and went in
+without waiting.  There was a strong smell of ammonia in the air.
+The blinds were half lowered, and in the dim light Eve did not see
+very clearly.  Presently, from the depths of a huge four-poster bed,
+she descried a pair of keen eyes--the face of Mrs. Harrington.  The
+face, the eyes, the mind were alive, the body was stricken; it was
+almost dead already.  Mrs. Harrington looked down at the shapeless
+limbs beneath the coverlet with something like fear in her eyes,
+something of the expression of a dog that has been run over.  This
+woman meant to die hard.
+
+Eve knew little of life, but she was no stranger to death.  She
+recognised our last enemy in the grey face beneath the canopy of the
+four-poster.
+
+"Where have you been so long, child?" said Mrs. Harrington
+querulously, "leaving me to these fools of servants.  I have been
+unwell, but I'm better now.  They've sent for the doctor.  I shall
+be better presently.  I have no pain, only--only a sort of
+numbness."
+
+She looked down at her left hand, which lay outside the coverlet,
+and fear was in her eyes.  She had defied men too long to be afraid
+of God, but she did not want to die; she had too keen an enjoyment
+for the good things of this world.
+
+Eve came to the bedside.
+
+Mrs. Harrington's face was drawn together in anger.  She was annoyed
+that Death should have come for her, and, true to herself, she
+insulted him by deliberately ignoring his presence.  There was
+something defiant in her cold eyes still, something unbeaten,
+although she knew that there was no one on her side.  The general
+feeling was against her.  So far as the world was concerned, Death
+could have her.
+
+Eve turned away from the bed and faced the doctor, who was coming
+into the room with Mrs. Harrington's maid.  No one displayed the
+slightest emotion.  A selfish life and a happy death are rarely
+vouchsafed to the same person.  The doctor did not ask Eve to stay,
+so she went downstairs and wrote to Fitz, sending the note round to
+his rooms in Jermyn Street by a servant.  It was the second time in
+her life that she had sent for Fitz.
+
+When the doctor came downstairs, Eve went out into the hall.  He
+pointed with his finger to the room from which she came, and
+followed her back there.  He was a middle-aged man, educated to the
+finger-tips--all science and no heart.
+
+"Are you a relation of Mrs. Harrington's?" he inquired.
+
+"We are distantly connected," answered Eve.
+
+The doctor was not giving much attention to her answer.  He had a
+habit of tapping his teeth with his thumbnail, which made Eve
+dislike him at sight.
+
+"Has she any one else?" he asked.  "Any one who--cares?"
+
+He was quite without the intention of being rude but he was absorbed
+in his profession, and had a large practice.  He wanted to go.
+
+"She has a nephew.  I have sent for him."
+
+The doctor nodded.  He glanced at Eve, then he said quietly -
+
+"She will live about an hour.  She wants me to come again and bring
+another man.  I will do it, although it is useless.  There are some
+things money cannot buy."
+
+With a quick mechanical smile he was gone.
+
+Eve went upstairs again to the room where Mrs. Harrington was
+fighting her last fight.  As she passed up the stairs, she noticed
+two letters on the hall table awaiting postage; one was addressed to
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker, the other to Luke, at Malta.
+
+Mrs. Harrington had ordered the blinds to be pulled up, and the
+daylight showed her face to be little changed.  It had always been
+grey; the shadows on it now were grey; the eyes were active and
+bright.  It was only the body that was dying; Mrs. Harrington's mind
+was bright and keen as ever.
+
+"That doctor is a fool," she said.  "I have told him to come back
+and bring Sir James Harlow with him.  And will you please send and
+tell Fitz that I should like to see him?  You must arrange to stay
+on a few days until I am better.  Captain Bontnor will have to do
+without you.  My servants are not to be trusted alone.  I shall want
+you to keep them in order; they require a tight reign."
+
+"I have sent for Fitz," said Eve.
+
+"Why?" snapped Mrs. Harrington.  "To come and make love to you?
+Leave that to Agatha.  She has been teaching them both to do that
+for the last three years.  Her idea is to marry the one who gets my
+money.  I've known that all along."
+
+Eve's dark eyes hardened suddenly.  She could not believe what the
+doctor had told her five minutes earlier.  Five minutes--one-twelfth
+part of Mrs. Harrington's life ebbed away.
+
+"Pray do not talk like that," said the girl quietly.
+
+Mrs. Harrington's cold grey eyes fell before Eve's glance of mingled
+wonder and contempt; her right hand was feebly plucking at the
+counterpane.
+
+Far below, in the basement, a bell rang, and soon after there was a
+step on the stairs.
+
+"Who is that?" inquired Mrs. Harrington.
+
+"Fitz."
+
+The dying woman was looking at the door with an unwonted longing in
+her eyes.
+
+"You seem to know his step," she said, with a jealous laugh.
+
+Eve said nothing.  The door opened, and Fitz came in.
+
+Mrs. Harrington was the first to speak.
+
+"I am not well this morning, dear," she said.  "I sent for you
+because I have a few things I want you to do for me."
+
+"Pleasure," murmured Fitz, glancing at Eve.  He either did not know
+how ill Mrs Harrington was, or he did not care.  It is probable that
+these two persons now at the dying woman's bed were the only two
+people who would be in any degree sorry at her death.
+
+Eve, with a woman's instinct, busied herself with the pillow--with
+the little adjuncts of a sick-room which had already found their way
+to the bedside.  She looked at Mrs. Harrington's face, saw the hard
+eyes fixed on Fitz, and something in the glance made her leave the
+room.
+
+"Just leave me alone," the dying woman said peevishly as Eve went
+away; "I don't want a lot of people bothering about."
+
+But Fitz stayed, and when Eve had closed the door the sudden look of
+cunning that came over the faded face did not appear to surprise
+him.
+
+"Quick!" whispered Mrs. Harrington, "quick!  I do not believe I am
+dying, as that doctor said I was, but it is better to make sure.
+Open the left-hand drawer in the dressing-table; you will find my
+keys."
+
+Fitz obeyed her, bringing the bunch of keys, rusty and black from
+being concealed in a thousand different hiding-places.
+
+"Now," she said, "open that desk; it was--your father's.  Bring it
+here.  Be quick!  Some one may come."
+
+Her shrivelled fingers fumbled hastily among some old papers.
+Finally she found an envelope, brown with age, on which was written,
+in her own spidery handwriting, "Recipe for apple jelly."
+
+She thrust the envelope into Fitz's hands, and he smilingly read the
+superscription.
+
+"That's nothing," she explained sharply; "that's only for the
+servants.  One cannot be too careful.  Inside there is some money.
+I saved it up.  It will help to furnish your new cabin."
+
+"Thank you," said Fitz, looking critically at the envelope.  "But--"
+
+"You must take it," she interrupted; "it is the only money I ever
+saved."  She broke off with a malicious laugh.  "All these fools
+thought I was rich," she went on.  "They have been scheming and
+plotting to get my money.  There is no money.  That is all there is.
+You and Luke were the only two who never thought about it.  You are
+both like your father.  Here, shut the desk up again.  Put it back
+on the table.  Now hide the keys--left-hand corner, under the box of
+hairpins."
+
+Fitz obeyed her and came back towards the bed.  His large mind felt
+a sudden contempt for this petty and mean woman.  He did not
+understand her, and the contempt he felt for her in some way hurt
+him.  He was afraid of what she was going to say next.
+
+"But," she said, "if I get better you must give me the money back."
+
+Fitz gave a little laugh.  Something prompted him to open the
+envelope and look at the contents.  There were five notes of ten
+pounds each.  The rich Mrs. Harrington of Grosvenor Gardens had
+saved fifty pounds, and she lay on her death-bed watching Fitz count
+this vast hoard with a quiet deliberation.  In its way it was a
+tragedy--the grimmest of all--for its dominant note was the
+contemptibility of human nature.
+
+"I do not want the money.  I should not keep it under any
+circumstances."
+
+"What would you do with it?" she asked sharply.
+
+"Give it to a charity."
+
+"No, no, you must not do that; they are all swindles!"
+
+In her eagerness she tried to sit up, and fell back with a puzzled
+look on her face, as if some one had struck her.
+
+"Here," she gasped, "give it to me! give it to me!"
+
+She clutched the envelope in her unsteady hands, and suddenly her
+jaw dropped.
+
+Fitz ran to the door.  On the stairs were the two doctors, followed
+closely by Eve.  In a moment the doctors were at the bedside.
+
+"Yes," said one of them--the younger of the two--and he glanced at
+his watch.  "I gave her an hour."
+
+The elder man took the dead woman's hand in his.  He released the
+envelope from her grasp and read the superscription, "Recipe for
+apple jelly."  With a grave smile he handed the envelope to Eve as
+Fitz took her out of the room.
+
+They went downstairs together, and both were thinking of D'Erraha.
+They went into the library, which was silent and gloomy.  Fitz had
+not spoken yet, but she seemed to understand his silence, just as
+she had understood it once before.  She had told him then.  She did
+not do so now.
+
+Eve was not thinking of the dead woman upstairs.  This death came to
+her only as a faint reflection of the one great grief which had cut
+her life in two--as great griefs do.  She was perhaps wondering how
+it was that Fitz seemed always to come to her at those moments when
+she could not do without him.  She was more probably not thinking at
+all, but resting as it were in the sense of complete safety and
+protection which this man's presence gave her.
+
+There was a little silence, broken only by the sound of street
+traffic faintly heard through the plate-glass windows.  Fitz was
+looking at her, his blue eyes grave and searching.  This was not a
+man to miss his opportunity, this youngest commander on the list.
+
+"Eve," he said, "I used to think at D'Erraha that you cared for me."
+
+"I have always cared for you," she answered, with a queer little
+smile, half bold, half shy.
+
+So Love came in at the windows as Death crept up the stairs.
+
+Before long they heard the doctors go away, but they heeded not.
+They only forgot each other when Cipriani de Lloseta came into the
+room.  The Spaniard's quick eyes read something in Eve's face.  He
+looked sharply at Fitz, but he said nothing of what he saw.
+
+"So our dear lady has been taken from us," he said quietly, with an
+upward jerk of the head.
+
+Fitz nodded.  Cipriani de Lloseta walked to the window and quietly
+drew down the blind.
+
+"So falls the curtain," he said, "on the little drama of my humble
+life."
+
+He turned and looked from one to the other with that sudden warmth
+of love which either of them seemed able to draw from him.
+
+"Some day," he said, "I will tell you--you two--the story, but not
+now."
+
+He stepped forward and raised Eve's fingers to his lips.  A quaint,
+half-Spanish grace marked the picture of Southern chivalry.
+
+"My child," said Lloseta, "may Heaven always bless you!"  And he
+left them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.  "MILKSOP".
+
+     What have we made each other?
+
+The cathedral bells were calling good Papists to their morning
+devotion as the Croonah moved into Valetta harbour.  No sooner did
+her black prow appear between the pier heads than a score of boats
+left the steps, their rowers gesticulating, quarrelling, laughing
+among themselves with Maltese vivacity.
+
+One boat, flying the Croonah's houseflag, made its way more
+leisurely through the still, clear water.  This boat was bringing
+mails to the Croonah, and in the letter-bag Mrs. Harrington's last
+missive to Luke had found its place.  This letter had been posted by
+the well-trained footman while Eve and Fitz stood at Mrs.
+Harrington's bedside.  Before it was stamped at the district office
+the hand that wrote it was still.  And it contained mischief.  Even
+after her death Mrs. Harrington brought trouble to the man whose
+life she had spoilt by her caprice.  The letter ran -
+
+"DEAR LUKE,--Just a line to tell you that you may bring your
+portmanteau straight up to Grosvenor Gardens when your ship arrives
+in London.  I read of your fortunate escape from the cyclone, and
+congratulate you.  I dare say I shall be having a few friends to
+stay when you are with me, so you need not fear dulness.  Yours
+affectionately,
+                                "MARIAN HARRINGTON.
+
+"P.S.--I always suspect you of having, consciously or unconsciously,
+possessed yourself of the affections of a young lady who shall be
+nameless.  A word to the wise:  make good use of your opportunities,
+for there are other aspirants in the field--a certain brilliant
+young naval officer not unknown to you.  Moreover his chance appears
+to be a good one.  You must waste no more time."
+
+It happened that Luke FitzHenry was in a dangerous mood when he read
+this letter.  He had been up half the night.  The captain had been
+cross-grained and unreasonable.  Even the mildest of us has his
+moments of clear-sightedness when he sees the world and the
+hollowness thereof.  Luke saw this and more when he had read Mrs.
+Harrington's evil communication.  He seemed to have reached the end
+of things, when his present life became no longer tolerable.  It
+must be remembered that this man was passionate and very resolute.
+Moreover he had been handicapped from the beginning of his life by a
+tendency to go wrong.  He was not a good subject for ill-fortune.
+
+It was his duty to go ashore with papers to be delivered at the
+agent's office.  He delivered his papers and then he went to the
+cable office.  He telegraphed the single word "Milksop" to Willie
+Carr in London.  When he got back to the Croonah, worn out, dirty,
+and morose, the passengers were not yet astir.  He had an
+unsatisfactory breakfast, and went to his cabin for a few hours'
+necessary sleep.  He had given way to a great temptation, not as the
+weak give way, on the spur of the moment, with hesitation, but as a
+strong man--strong, even in his weaknesses.
+
+He did it after mature deliberation--did it thoroughly and
+carefully, without the least intention of regretting it afterwards.
+He was desperate and driven.  He could not think of life without
+Agatha, and he did not see why he should be called upon to do so.
+Ill fortune had dogged him from his childhood.  He had borne it all,
+morosely but without a murmur.  He was going to turn at last.  The
+Croonah must go.  She was well insured, he knew that.  That the
+cargo was fully covered against loss he could safely suppose.  As to
+the passengers and the crew, none of them should suffer; he thought
+he was a clever enough sailor for that.
+
+So he laid him down in his little cabin to sleep, while the sun rose
+over the blue Mediterranean, while some passengers went ashore and
+others came on board, while the single word "Milksop" was spelt over
+a continent; and he was still sleeping when the anchor was jerked up
+from its muddy bed, and the watchers on pier and harbour looked
+their last on the grand old Croonah.
+
+A breeze was blowing out in the open, one of those bright westerly
+breezes that bring a breath of the Atlantic into the Mediterranean,
+and often make the short passage from Malta to Gibraltar the worst
+part of the voyage from India to the Channel.
+
+None of the passengers took any interest in the morose second
+officer, and few of them remarked his absence from table during the
+two days' passage.  The Croonah arrived at Gibraltar after dark,
+took her mails and passengers on board, and proceeded down the
+Straits about eight o'clock in the evening.  It was late autumn, and
+the breeze from the cool Atlantic still hurried in over the parched
+lands of Africa and Southern Europe.
+
+Tarifa light was sighted and left twinkling behind.  Trafalgar
+stared out of the darkness ahead, and in its turn was left behind.
+A few of the passengers had recovered their Mediterranean ill-usage
+sufficiently to dine in the Straits, but the Atlantic swell soon
+sent them below.  The decks were deserted, for many of these people
+were returning to England after long years in India, and the first
+chill northern breeze they met made them shiver while it delighted
+them.
+
+Luke FitzHenry was on the bridge from eight o'clock till midnight,
+motionless at his post--a mere navigating machine, respected and
+feared by all who worked with him, understood of none.
+
+When midnight came he exchanged a few words with the first officer,
+and together they superintended the shaking out of the foresails
+before the watch went below.  The wind was on the quarter, strong
+and steady.  Almost immediately the good steamer felt the canvas,
+leaning gently over to leeward, adding another mile to her great
+speed.  The sea was black, and the air seemed to be full of the
+sounds of waves breaking and hissing.  Ahead the mast-head and the
+side-lights shone down on the face of the waters and lighted up an
+occasional white-capped wave.  In the air, brisk and masterful,
+there was a sense of purpose and tension which sailors understand,
+while mere printed words cannot convey it to landsmen.  It was a
+very dark night.
+
+"St. Vincent," said Luke tersely, as he turned to leave the bridge.
+The first officer, a man grown old at his post, followed the
+direction of his junior's gaze, but some seconds elapsed before he
+distinguished the light twinkling feebly low down on the horizon.
+
+Luke went to his cabin and lay down on his berth all dressed.  He
+was due on the bridge again at four o'clock.  The Croonah sailed by
+time-table, subjecting the winds and seas, as the great steamships
+do nowadays.  Luke FitzHenry had calculated this to a minute before
+he telegraphed the single word "Milksop" to Willie Carr in London.
+
+He was on the bridge a few minutes before eight bells rang, and
+found the captain.  He knew his chief's customs.  He knew that this
+wise old sailor was in the habit of accumulating as much sleep in
+his brain as possible before passing Ushant light, because he lived
+on the bridge when the Croonah had once turned eastward up the
+Channel.  Whenever the captain took a night's rest, he broke it at
+four o'clock, at the change of the watch.  He stood muffled in a big
+coat over his pyjamas, and exchanged a few words with his
+subordinates.  After the first officer had gone below, Luke went to
+his post at the starboard end of the bridge, while the captain
+walked slowly backwards and forwards.  They remained thus for half
+an hour.  The ship was all quiet.  The breeze had fallen a little.
+There was as yet no sign of daybreak towards the east.  A steamer
+passed, showing a red light and a white mast-head light.
+
+Presently the captain paused in his walk near to Luke.
+
+"Call me," he said, "when you raise the Burling light."
+
+Luke answered with a monosyllable, and the elder sailor went towards
+the ladder.
+
+No one had heard the order given.  Luke followed him to the ladder,
+and watched him go down into the darkness.  They had sailed together
+six years in fair weather and foul; they had fought and conquered a
+cyclone in the Bay together from that bridge; but Agatha Ingham-
+Baker was stronger than these things.  Woman is the strongest thing
+in a man's life.
+
+There was still no sign of daylight, no faintest gleam in the
+eastern sky, when the Burling light was sighted right ahead.  The
+look-out on the forecastle did not "sing out" the lights on board
+the Croonah, but sent a companion aft to the bridge with the report.
+This was done for the comfort of the passengers.
+
+Luke altered the course half a point.  From the wheel-house the men
+could not see the light, which was hidden by the fore-mast.  Luke
+went aft and looked at the patent log.  His calculations were all
+correct.  He glanced at his watch--he had to go to the wheel-house
+to do this, and the binnacle-lights showed his face to be still and
+pale.  He moved and had the air of a man upon whose shoulders an
+immense responsibility was weighing.  He was going to wreck the
+Croonah, but he had two hundred and ninety lives to save.  He
+carefully studied the eastern sky.  He did not want daylight yet.
+
+The Burling light is not a very big one--not so big, some mariners
+think, as it should be.  It is visible twenty-five miles away; but
+Luke's knowledge told him that in thick and misty weather, such as
+hovers over this coast in a westerly wind, the glare of the
+revolving lamp could not be distinguished at a greater distance than
+ten or twelve miles.
+
+The Croonah raced on, a ship full of sleeping human beings.  There
+came a faint blue tinge into the eastern sky, a gleam over the
+eastern sea.
+
+The Burling light--an eye looking round into the darkness, seeming
+to open and shut sleepily--grew brighter and brighter.  It was right
+ahead! it rose as they approached it until it stood right above the
+bowsprit.
+
+Then Luke FitzHenry changed the course.  The Croonah turned her
+blunt prow half a point out into the Atlantic, and she raced on; she
+passed by Burling Island, leaving the slowly winking eye on her
+starboard quarter.  Ahead lay the complete darkness of the north-
+west horizon.
+
+Luke stood at his post, his eyes hidden by his binoculars.  He was
+studying the horizon in front of him--in front of the Croonah.
+There was a little lump on the horizon, like the top of a mountain
+sticking out of the sea; this he knew to be the rock called the
+Great Farilhao.  Again he altered the course, still seeking the
+Atlantic, another quarter point to the west.  He was going to pass
+the Great Farilhao as he had passed the Burling, within a stone's
+throw.  This he actually did, the rugged outline of the barren rock
+standing out sharply against the eastern sky.  There was now nothing
+ahead; the horizon lay before him, clear, unbroken.
+
+Luke moved a few paces.  He went and stood by the engine-room
+telegraph.  The engines throbbed merrily, but the steamer was still
+asleep.  There was no sound but the thud of the piston-rods and the
+whispering swirl of the water lashed by the huge screw.
+
+The Croonah raced on, her sails set, her engines working at full
+speed.  Suddenly Luke FitzHenry grasped the handle of the engine-
+room signal.  He wrenched it to one side--"Stand by."  Instantly the
+gong answered, "Stand by."  "Half speed ahead."
+
+And half speed ahead it was.  Luke FitzHenry was clever even in his
+crime; he had three hundred lives to save.  He stood motionless as a
+statue, gazing at the smooth unbroken water in front of him; he
+grasped the rail and set his teeth; he stood well back with his feet
+firmly planted.  And there was a grinding crash.  The Croonah seemed
+to climb up into the air, then she stopped dead, and below--inside
+her--there was a long, rumbling crash, as if all that was inside her
+had been cast forward in confusion.  She had run on to the sunken
+rocks that lie north-west of the Farilhoes.
+
+A great silence followed and immediately the pattering of bare feet.
+A confused murmuring of voices rose from the saloon gangway--a
+buzzing sound, like that of a hive disturbed.  A single voice rose
+in a shriek of mortal terror, and immediately there followed a
+chorus of confused shouts.
+
+Luke already had his lips at the speaking-tube.  He was telling the
+engineer on watch to steam ahead; he knew the danger of the Croonah
+slipping back into deep water and sinking.
+
+In a marvellously short time the decks were thronged with people,
+some standing white-faced and calm in the dim light of early
+morning; others, mad with terror, rushing from side to side.
+
+The strange part of it was that Luke remained alone on the bridge.
+The captain and the other officers were busy with the passengers.
+The second officer remained motionless at his post; he commanded the
+steersman by a wave of the arm to stay at the wheel, although he
+knew that the Croonah would never answer her helm again; her
+travelling days were done.
+
+In the dim light now increasing momentarily, Luke FitzHenry looked
+down upon the wildly confused decks and saw discipline slowly assert
+itself.  He saw the captain commanding by sheer force of individual
+power; he saw the quartermasters form in line across the deck and
+drive the passengers farther aft, leaving room to get out the boats.
+
+In a few moments--in a marvellously short space of time--the work of
+saving life began.  A boat was lowered, the crew slipped into their
+places, and a certain number of lady passengers were hastily handed
+down the gangway.  The first boat eased away.  The oars were thrown
+out.  It was off, and some of the passengers cheered.  One can never
+tell what men, especially Englishmen, may do when they actually see
+death face to face.  The boat was headed to the south-east, towards
+the Carreiro do Mosteiro, on Burling Island, the only possible
+landing-place.
+
+Luke felt a touch on his arm and turned sharply.  It was a
+quartermaster, breathless but cool.
+
+"Captain wants you, sir.  I'll take the bridge."
+
+Luke turned to obey orders.
+
+"Keep her steaming full speed ahead," he said, jerking his head
+towards the engine-room telegraph.
+
+"Ay, sir," the man replied.
+
+"Until the water gets to the furnaces," he added to himself, "and
+then we're dead men."
+
+Luke ran lightly down the iron ladder to the lower bridge, which was
+deserted.  From thence he made his way aft to the quarter-deck.  As
+he passed the saloon staircase he ran against two women; one was
+dragging the other, or attempting to do so, towards the group of
+passengers huddled together amidships.
+
+"You go," the younger woman was saying, "if you want to.  I will
+wait."
+
+Luke stopped.  The elder woman was apparently wild with terror.  She
+had not even stopped to put on a dressing-gown.  Her thin grey hair
+fluttered in the breeze.  She was stout and an object of ridicule
+even with death clutching at her.
+
+"Go on, mother," said the younger woman, with contempt in her voice.
+
+"Agatha!" cried Luke.  "You here?"
+
+"Yes; we came on board at Malta."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.  THE END OF THE "CROONAH".
+
+     Our life is given us as a blank;
+     Ourselves must make it blest or curst.
+
+A man came running along and clutched at Luke's arm.
+
+"Captain wants you, sir, immediate!" he cried.
+
+"All right," answered Luke.  "Here, take this lady and put her into
+a boat."
+
+Mrs. Ingham-Baker was clinging to him.
+
+"Luke," she said firmly, "you must provide us with a lifeboat--a
+safe one.  I will not stand this neglect."
+
+"Here!" cried Luke to the man.  "Take her away."
+
+"You come along o' me, marm," said the man, with a twinkle in his
+eye.  "I'll pervide ye with a lifeboat, bless yer heart!"
+
+And in the dim light of the saloon stairhead lamp, Luke and Agatha
+were left facing each other.
+
+"Why did you not let me know you were coming?" he asked sharply.  He
+looked round with haggard eyes; they were quite alone.
+
+"I had no time.  We just caught the boat by an hour."
+
+She was singularly quiet.  Both of them seemed to forget that every
+moment lost increased the danger of their position.
+
+"Why did you come?" he asked.
+
+She looked at him, and there was that in her eyes that makes men
+mad.
+
+"Because I could not stay away from you."
+
+His breath came sharply with a catch.
+
+For a few moments they forgot such things as life and death.  They
+did more, they defied death; for surely such love as this is
+stronger than the mere end of life.  Again it was the possibility of
+something good and something strong that lurked hidden behind the
+worldliness of Agatha Ingham-Baker, and Luke FitzHenry, of all men,
+alone had the power of bringing that possibility to the surface.
+
+All around them the wind moaned and shrieked through the rigging;
+the waves, beating against the sheer side of the doomed Croonah,
+filled the air with a sound of great foreboding--the deep voice of
+an elemental power that knows no mercy.  Within twenty feet of them
+men and women were struggling like dumb and driven animals for bare
+life--struggling, shouting, quarrelling over a paltry precedence of
+a minute or so in going to the boats; within a hundred yards of
+them, out over the dark waters, Agatha's mother, thrown from an
+overturned boat, was struggling her last struggle, with her silly
+old face turned indignantly up to heaven.  But they saw none of
+these things.
+
+All the good men were wanted for the boats, and the captain, with
+two officers only and a few stewards, defended the gangway against
+the rush of the panic-stricken native crew.
+
+"FitzHenry!  FitzHenry!" the old captain shouted.  "For God's sake,
+come here!"  For Luke alone was dreaded by the lascars.
+
+But Luke and Agatha heeded nothing.  These people, these lives, were
+nothing to them, for a passionate love is the acme of selfishness.
+
+They heard the sounds, however; they heard the captain calling for
+the man who had never failed him.
+
+"I wrecked her for you," said Luke, in Agatha's hungry ears.  "I did
+it all for you."
+
+And at last the woman's vanity was satisfied; it was thrown a sop
+that would suffice for its eternal greed.  Luke had done this thing
+for her.  She was quick enough to guess how and why, for she knew
+Willie Carr.  She knew that good ships are thrown away for money's
+sake.  The Croonah had been thrown away for her sake--the Croonah,
+the patient, obedient servant to Luke's slightest word, almost an
+animal in its mechanical intelligence, filling that place in the
+sailor's heart that some men reserve for their horses and others for
+their wives.  Women have been jealous of a ship before now.  Eve was
+jealous of the Terrific; Agatha had always been jealous of the
+Croonah.  And now the ship had been thrown away for her, and with
+his ship Luke had cast away his unrivalled reputation as a seaman,
+his honour as a gentleman, his conscience.  He was a criminal, a
+thief, a murderer for Agatha's sake.  She, true to her school, to
+her generation, to her training, was proud of it; for she was one of
+those unhappy women who will not have their lovers love honour more.
+
+There was a sudden roar far down in the bowels of the vessel, and
+immediately volumes of steam issued from every skylight.  The
+inrushing sea had broken down the bulk-heads, the water had reached
+the engine-rooms.  In an instant Luke was alive to the danger--the
+good sailor that was within the man all awake.  His trained ears and
+the tread of his feet on the deck told him that the screw was still.
+
+"Come," he cried to Agatha, "you must get away in the next boat."
+
+But Agatha resisted his arm.  That which had hitherto been mere
+pertness in her manner and carriage had suddenly grown into a strong
+determination.  The woman was cool and fearless.
+
+"Not without you," she answered.  "I will not leave the ship until
+you do."
+
+"I must stay till the last," he said.
+
+She looked at him with a little smile, for women love courage,
+though it sometimes frightens them.  She never dreamt of danger to
+either of them.  Her trust in Luke was all-sufficient, without
+reserve, without hesitation.
+
+"Then I will stay too."
+
+For a moment his iron nerve--a nerve which had deliberately planned
+all this destruction--wavered.
+
+"Why did you not let me know you were coming?" he asked desperately.
+
+"I had no time," she answered, with a singular shortness, for she
+could not tell him that a letter from Mrs. Harrington to her mother-
+-the companion to that received by Luke at Valetta--had brought
+about this sudden decision.  She could not tell him that, egged on
+by a transparent hint from Mrs. Harrington that Luke was to be her
+heir, she and her mother had taken the first boat to Malta; that she
+had deliberately planned to marry him for the money that was to be
+his.  Such a confession was impossible at that time; with his arms
+still round her, the mere thought of it nauseated her.  For a
+moment, she saw herself as others had seen her--a punishment which
+for some women is quite sufficient.
+
+At this moment a man came running along the deck--the same
+quartermaster who had taken charge of Mrs. Ingham-Baker.  He was a
+man of no nerves whatever, and of considerable humour.
+
+"Any more ladies?" he was shouting as he ran.  "Any more for the
+shore?"
+
+He laughed at his own conceit as he ran--the same fearless laugh
+with which he sent Mrs. Ingham-Baker down the gangway to her death.
+He paused, saw Luke and Agatha standing together beneath the lamp.
+
+"Captain's callin' you like hell!" he cried.  "Engine-room's full.
+The old ship's got it this time, sir."
+
+"All right, I know," answered Luke curtly; and the man ran on,
+shouting as he went.
+
+At this moment the Croonah gave a shiver, and Luke looked round
+hastily.  He ran to the rail and looked over with a quick sailor's
+glance fore and aft.  He turned towards Agatha again, but before he
+could reach her the steamer gave a lurch over to starboard.  The
+deck seemed to rise between them.  For a moment Agatha stood above
+him, then she half ran, half fell, down the short steep incline into
+his arms.  Luke was ready for her, with one foot against the rail--
+for the deck was at an angle of thirty and more; no one could stand
+on it.  He caught her deftly, and the breeze whirling round the
+deck-house blew her long hair across his face.
+
+She never changed colour.  There was the nucleus of a good and
+strong woman somewhere in Agatha Ingham-Baker.  She clung to her
+lover's arms and watched his face with a faith that nothing could
+shake.  Thus they stood during three eternal seconds while the
+Croonah seemed to hesitate, poised on the brink.  Then the great
+steamer slowly slid backwards, turning a little as she did so.
+
+There was a sickening sound of gurgling water.  The Croonah was
+afloat, but only for a few seconds.  There was no time to lower
+another boat, and all on board knew it.  There were not many
+remaining, for the passengers had all left the ship--the stokers,
+the engineers.  Amidships the captain stood, surrounded by his
+officers and a few European sailors--faithful to the end.  They had
+only one boat left, and that was forward, half under water--out of
+the question.  So they stood and waited for the ship to sink beneath
+them.
+
+In the distance, on the rough sea, now grey in the light of a sullen
+dawn, two boats were approaching, having landed their human freight
+on Burling Island.
+
+"Now, my lads," cried the captain, "if any of you are feeling like
+going overboard, over you go."
+
+One man slowly took off his coat.  He stooped down and unlaced his
+boots, while the others watched him.  It seemed to take him hours.
+The bows of the great steamer were almost buried in the broken seas;
+her stern was raised high in the air, showing the screw and the
+rudder.
+
+The man who preferred to swim for it looked round with a strange
+smile into the quiet, rough faces of his undismayed companions.  It
+seemed to be merely a choice of deaths.
+
+"Well, mates," he said, "so long!"
+
+He dived overboard and swam slowly away.
+
+Luke watched him speculatively.  He knew that had he been alone he
+could have saved himself quite easily.  With Agatha his chances were
+less certain.  Agatha it was who had spoilt his careful calculation.
+Without conceit--for he was a stubbornly self-depreciating man--he
+knew that his absence from his captain's side had just made the
+difference--the little difference between life and death--to twenty
+or thirty people.  Had he been beside the captain and the other
+officers the native crew would have worked quietly and intrepidly;
+there would have been time for all hands to leave the Croonah before
+she slipped back into deep water.
+
+The great steamer rolled slowly from side to side, like a helpless
+dumb animal in death agony, but she never righted herself, her decks
+were never level.  At length she gave a roll to leeward and failed
+to recover herself.  From some air-shaft there came a ceaseless
+whistle, deep and sonorous, like the emission of air from the
+bunghole of a beer-barrel.  The engines were quite still, even the
+steam had ceased to rise.
+
+Luke stood holding Agatha with one arm.  He was watching the two
+boats making their way through the choppy sea towards them, and
+Agatha was watching his face.
+
+The Croonah was now lying right over on her beam ends.  Luke was
+standing on the wire network of the rail.  Suddenly he threw himself
+backwards, and as they fell through space Agatha heard the captain's
+voice quite distinctly, as from the silence of another world.
+
+"She's going!" he cried.
+
+They struck the water together, Luke undermost, as he had intended.
+Agatha shut her eyes and clung to him.  They seemed to go down and
+down.  Then suddenly she heard Luke's voice.
+
+"Take a breath," he gasped short and sharp.  His voice was
+singularly stern.
+
+With his disengaged hand he put her hair from her face.  She opened
+her eyes and saw him smiling at her; she saw a huge piece of
+wreckage poised on the edge of a wave over his head; she saw it
+fall; she felt the shock of it.
+
+Luke's arm lost its hold; he rolled over feebly in the water, the
+blood running down his face, a sudden sense of sleep in his brain.
+He awoke again to find himself swimming mechanically, and opened his
+eyes.  Close to him something white was floating half under water.
+Spread out over the surface of the wave Agatha's long hair rose and
+fell like seaweed, almost within his grasp.  It was like a horrible
+nightmare.  He tried to reach it, but his arms were powerless; he
+could not make an inch of progress; he could only keep himself
+afloat.  Agatha's face was under water.  On the rise of a wave he
+saw her little bare foot; it was quite still.  He knew that she was
+dead, and the blessed sleepiness took him again, dragging him down.
+
+          .          .          .          .          .
+
+So the last of the Croonah was her good name written large on a
+yellow telegram form, nailed to the panel of the room technically
+known as the Chamber of Horrors at Lloyd's.
+
+Around this telegram a group of grave-faced men stood in silence, or
+with muttered words of surprise.
+
+"The Croonah!" they said, "the Croonah!" as if a pillar of their
+faith had fallen.  For once no one had a theory:  no carpet mariner
+could explain this thing.
+
+Against the jamb of the window, behind them all, Willie Carr stood
+leaning.
+
+"Done anything on her?" some one asked him.
+
+"Yes, bad luck," he answered.  "Had friends on her, too."
+
+It was a long and expansive telegram, giving the list of the lost,
+twenty-nine in all, and among the names were mentioned Mrs. Ingham-
+Baker and her daughter.
+
+"Ship in charge of second officer," said the telegram.  And lower
+down, at the foot of the fatal list:  "Second officer picked up
+unconscious.  Doing well."
+
+Suddenly Willie Carr moved, and, turning his back somewhat hastily,
+looked out of the window.
+
+Fitz had just come into the dreary, fateful little room, conducted
+thither by the Admiralty agent.  He read the telegram carefully from
+beginning to end.
+
+"Luke on the Burlings!" he muttered, as he turned to go.  "Luke!  I
+can't understand it.  He must have been mad!"
+
+And after all Fitz only spoke the truth; but it was a madness to
+which we are all subject.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.  AT D'ERRAHA AGAIN.
+
+                    There is no statute so sublime
+     As Love's in all the world; and e'en to kiss
+     The pedestal is still a better bliss
+     Than all ambitions.
+
+Three years later Eve was sitting on the terrace of the Casa
+d'Erraha.  It was late autumn, and we who live in Northern latitudes
+do not quite realise what the autumn of Southern Europe is.  Artists
+and others interested in the beauties of nature love a dry summer
+for the autumn that is sure to follow it.  In Spain and in the
+islands of the Mediterranean every summer is dry, and every autumn
+is beautiful.
+
+The Casa d'Erraha has not changed in any way--nothing changes in the
+Balearics.  The same soft Southern odours creep up from the valley
+to battle with the strong resinous scent of the pines that crown the
+mountains.
+
+Eve had been a year in D'Erraha--the whole of her married life.  The
+Count de Lloseta placed the house at their disposal for the
+honeymoon.  Fitz and she came to stay a month; they had remained
+twelve.  It is often so in Majorca.  A number of Spaniards came six
+hundred years ago--nine families; the nine names are there to-day.
+
+Fitz had taken D'Erraha on the Minorcan rotas lease, so the old
+valley, the old house, was his.
+
+Eve was not alone on the terrace, for a certain small gentleman,
+called Henry Cyprian FitzHenry, a prospective sailor, lay in a pink
+and perfect slumber on her lap.  Henry Cyprian fully appreciated the
+valley of repose.
+
+Eve was reading a letter--a lamentable scrawl, by the way--obviously
+the work of a hand little used to the pen.
+
+"My dearie," the letter ran; and it bore the address--Malabar
+Cottage, Somarsh, Suffolk.
+
+
+"MY DEARIE,--Please thank your good husband for his letter to me
+announcing the birth of your son.  I hope the little man is doing
+well.  Make a sailor of him.  Being one myself I have had
+opportunity of noticing seafaring men under different circumstances,
+and I have never had an occasion to be ashamed of a shipmate, only
+excepting when he was drunk, which is human, so to speak.  Thanking
+the captain kindly for his inquiries, I have to advise that all is
+going well at Malabar Cottage.  The cottage keeps taut and staunch;
+and now that my old shipmate Creary has joined me, we keep to the
+weather side of the butcher's bill without any difficulty.  We pull
+along on a even keel wonderfully well, Creary being a good-natured
+man, and as pleasant a shipmate as one could wish.  He has brought
+his bits of things with him, and alongside of mine they make a
+homely look.  I miss your voice about the house, and sometimes I
+feel a bit lonely, but being a rough seafaring man I know that
+Malabar Cottage was hardly fit for a lady like yourself.  The Count
+de Lloseta has twice been down to see me, sitting affable down to
+our bit of lunch with us and making Creary laugh till he choked.  I
+don't rightly understand how it was that the Count and your good
+husband the captain (R.N.) fixed up my money affairs, getting so
+much of it back from Merton's while others haven't had a halfpenny.
+I asked the Count to explain, which he did at some length.  But I
+didn't rightly understand it, never having had a good head for
+figures, though I could always work out my sums near enough to fix
+her position on the chart at mid-day.  I take it that Mr. Lloseta
+has got a gift for financials, leastwise he pays me my money most
+regular, and last time there was two pounds more.  I am sure I ought
+to feel thankful that I have such good friends, and people, too, so
+much above me.  I understand that the Count de Lloseta is going out
+to Majorca this autumn.  He is a good man.--Your affectionate uncle,
+
+                      "WILLIAM JOHN BONTNOR (Master)."
+
+Eve read this effusion with a queer little smile which had no mirth
+in it.  She folded the letter carefully and laid it aside for her
+husband to see when he returned.  Then she fell into a reverie,
+looking down over the great silent valley that lay between her and
+the sea.  She had been out into the world and had come back to
+D'Erraha again.  In the world she had had a somewhat singular
+experience.  She had never loved a woman, she had never known a
+woman's love.  One man after another had come into her life, passing
+across the field of her mental vision when it was most susceptible
+to impression, each influencing her life in his own way, each loving
+her in his own way, each claiming her love.  Here was a woman, the
+mother of a boy, whose every thought had been formed by men, whose
+knowledge had been acquired from men, whose world was a world of
+men.  She would not have known what to do with a daughter, so Fate
+had sent her a son.  From the Caballero Challoner to Fitz, from Fitz
+to Captain Bontnor, from Captain Bontnor to John Craik, and from
+Craik back to Fitz, this, with Cipriani de Lloseta ever coming and
+going, in and out, had been Eve FitzHenry's life.
+
+These men had only taught her to be a woman, as men ever do; but
+from them she had acquired the broader way of taking life, the
+larger way of thinking, which promised well for Henry Cyprian lying
+asleep on her lap.
+
+She was thinking of these men, for all they had taught her, of all
+she had learnt from them without their knowing it, when one of them
+came to her.  Fitz had dismounted in the patio and came walking
+somewhat stiffly through to the terrace.  He had been out all day on
+a distant part of the D'Erraha property, for he combined the farmer
+and the sailor.  He had applied for a year's leave after having
+served his country for fifteen.  The year had run into fifteen
+months, and there was talk of the time when he should go to sea no
+longer.
+
+Fitz had changed little.  The cloud, however, that had formerly hung
+as it were in his eyes had vanished.  Eve had driven it away, slowly
+and surely.  Perhaps Henry Cyprian had something to do in the matter
+also by pushing his uncle Luke out of the place he had hitherto
+occupied in Fitz's heart.  Luke had voluntarily relinquished the
+place to a certain degree.  He had left England three years before
+to seek his fortune in other seas, and Fortune had come to him as
+she often does when she is sought half-heartedly.  Luke commanded
+one of the finest war-ships afloat, but she sailed under the Chilean
+flag.
+
+"Letters," said Fitz.
+
+Eve smiled and handed him Captain Bontnor's epistle.  She watched
+his face as he read--she had a trick of watching her husband's face.
+This was a hopelessly taciturn man, but Eve seemed to understand
+him.
+
+There was another letter unopened and addressed to Fitz.  He took it
+up and opened it leisurely, after the manner of one who has all he
+wants and looks for nothing by post.
+
+Eve saw his face brighten with surprise.  He read the letter
+through, and then he handed it to her.
+
+"Lloseta," he said, "is coming.  He is in Barcelona."
+
+Eve read the letter.  She leant back in her deep chair with a
+pensiveness, a faint suggestion of weariness bespeaking the end of a
+convalescence, which was perhaps climatic.
+
+"I have never understood the Count," she said.  "There are so many
+people one does not understand."
+
+She broke off with a little laugh, half impatient.
+
+"Yes," said her husband quietly.  "Whom are you thinking of?"
+
+"Agatha."
+
+Fitz was gazing at the fine quartz gravel beneath his feet.
+
+"Agatha cared for Luke," he said.
+
+A faint flicker of anxiety passed across Eve's eyes--the mention of
+Luke's name always brought it.  She had never seen this twin
+brother--this shadow as it were of Fitz's life--and it had been
+slowly borne in upon her--perhaps Henry Cyprian had taught her--that
+there is a tie between twins which no man can gauge nor tell whither
+it may lead.
+
+"Yes," she said quietly, "I know."
+
+"How do you know?  Did she tell you?"
+
+Eve smiled.
+
+"No; but I knew long ago.  I do not think she was good, Fitz, but
+that was good in her--quite good.  People say that it sometimes
+saves men.  It often saves women.  I think it is better for a girl
+to have no mother at all than to have a foolish mother, much better,
+I am sure of it."
+
+"Women like Mrs. Ingham-Baker," said Fitz gruffly, "do more harm in
+the world than women who are merely bad.  She made Agatha what she
+was, and Agatha made Luke throw away the Croonah."
+
+"But the Court decided that it was an unusual current," said Eve,
+who had followed every word of the official inquiry.
+
+Fitz shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"He threw the ship away," he said.  "Sailors like Luke do not get
+wrecked on the Burlings."
+
+Eve did not pursue the subject, for this was the shadow on her
+happiness.  It has been ruled that we are not to be quite happy
+here, and those are happiest who have a shadow that comes from
+outside--from elsewhere than from themselves or their own love.
+
+Eve, womanlike, had thought of these things, analysing them as women
+do, and she recognised the shadow frankly.  She was too intelligent,
+too far-sighted to expect perfect bliss, but she knew that she had
+as near an approach to it as is offered for human delectation,
+neutralised as it was by that vague regret which is only the
+reflection of the active sorrows of others.
+
+Fitz had handed the Count's letter to his wife.  She read it slowly
+and allowed it to drop.  As it fluttered to her lap she caught sight
+of some writing on the back.
+
+"Did you see the postscript?" she asked.
+
+"No."
+
+She turned the letter and read aloud.
+
+"I saw Craik just before I left.  He was, I think, in better health.
+His mind is much too brilliant, his brain too active, his humour too
+keen to be that of a sick man.  When I told him your good news he
+quite forgot to be rheumatic.  'Glad to hear it, glad to hear it,'
+he said.  'She was much too good to be a mere writing woman.'  By
+the way, I imagine Eve never learnt that all the Spanish articles,
+except the first, passed through my hands as well as Craik's before
+publication.  I knew who wrote them, and am still one of their
+profoundest admirers, but, like John Craik, I am well content that
+the gifted author should turn her attention to other things, notably
+to my godson, to whom salutations.  Did either of you ever meet
+young Lord Seahampton, an excellent fellow, with the appearance of a
+cleanly groom and the heart of a true knight?  He was killed while
+riding a steeplechase last week.  I regret him deeply.  He was one
+of my few friends."
+
+Eve laid the letter down with a little sigh, a species of sigh which
+she reserved for Cipriani de Lloseta.
+
+"He is a nineteenth-century Quixote," she said.  "No one ever knows
+what good he may be doing."
+
+Then they fell to talking of this man, of what he had done and what
+he had left undone.  They guessed at what he had suffered, and of
+the suffering which he had spared others they knew a little; but of
+his own feelings they were ignorant, his motives they only knew in
+part.  His life had been lived out to a certain extent before them,
+but they knew nothing of it; it was a mere superficies without
+perspective, and Eve, woman-like, wanted to put a background to it.
+
+"But why," she persisted, from the height of her own happiness,
+which had apparently been so easy to reach, "why does he lead such a
+lonely, gloomy life?  Why has he so few friends?  Why does he not
+come and live at Lloseta instead of in the gloomy palace in the
+Calle de la Paz?"
+
+"His life is all whys," answered Fitz; "it is one big note of
+interrogation.  He said that some day he would tell us; no doubt he
+will."
+
+"Yes; perhaps so."
+
+Eve reflected, and again she indulged in a short sigh.
+
+"And after he has told us there will be nothing to be done, that is
+the worst of it; there will be nothing to be done, Fitz."
+
+"There never has been anything to be done," replied Fitz slowly, as
+was his wont.  "That has been the keynote of his life as long as I
+have known him.  If there had been anything to do, you may be sure
+that De Lloseta would have done it."
+
+Eve was bending over the small beginnings of a man lying supine on
+her knees.  She drew Henry Cyprian's wraps closer around him
+preparatory to taking him indoors.
+
+"Then his is surely the saddest life imaginable," she said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.  THE COUNT'S STORY.
+
+                    And yet I know
+     That tears lie deep in all I do.
+
+The pine forests on the mountain-tops were beginning to gather the
+darkness as the Count de Lloseta rode up the last slope to the Casa
+d'Erraha.  The sun had just set behind the rocky land that hides
+Miramar from D'Erraha.  A stillness seemed to be creeping down from
+the mountain to the valley.  The wind had gone down with the sun.
+
+The Count rode alone beneath the gloom of the maritime pines which
+grow to their finest European stature on the northern slope of
+D'Erraha.  He had been in the saddle all day; but Cipriani de
+Lloseta was a Spaniard, and a Spaniard is a different man when he
+has thrown his leg across a horse.  The suave indolence of manner
+seems to vanish, the courtly indifference, the sloth and
+contemplativeness which stand as a bar between our northern nature
+and the peninsular habit.  De Lloseta was a fine horseman--even in
+Spain, the nation of finest horsemen in the world; also he was on
+Majorcan soil again.  He had landed at Palma that morning from the
+Barcelona steamer, and he had found Fitz awaiting him with a servant
+and a led horse on the quay.
+
+There was a strangely excited gleam in De Lloseta's dark eyes which
+Fitz did not fail to notice.  The Count looked around over the dark
+wild faces of his countrymen and met no glance of recognition, for
+he had been absent forty years.  Then he raised his eyes to the old
+city towering on the hillside above them, the city that has not
+changed these six hundred years, and he smiled a wan smile.
+
+"I have brought a horse for you," said Fitz, "either to ride back to
+D'Erraha with me now or to take you to Lloseta, should you care to
+go direct there.  Eve has packed up some lunch for you in the
+saddle-bag if you think of going to Lloseta first."
+
+The Count nodded.
+
+"Yes," he said, "that is like Eve; she would think of such things."
+
+He went up to the horse, patted it, measured the length of the
+stirrup-leather, and then turned to Fitz.
+
+"I will go to Lloseta," he said.  "It is only natural after forty
+years.  I will be with you by seven o'clock to-night at D'Erraha."
+
+Fitz did not offer to accompany him, and Cipriani de Lloseta rode
+that strange ride alone; unknown, an outcast in his own land, he
+rode through the most fertile valley in the world, of which every
+tree was dear to him; and no man knew his thoughts.  The labourers
+in the fields, men and women, brown, sunburnt, half Moorish, wholly
+simple and natural, paused in their toil and looked wonderingly at
+the lonely horseman; the patient mules walking their ceaseless round
+at the Moorish wells blinked lazily at him; the eagles of Lloseta
+swept slowly round in a great circle far above the old castle, as
+they had swept in his childhood, and he looked up at them with his
+strange patient smile.  He pushed the great olive-wood gate open and
+passed into the terraced garden, all overgrown, neglected, mournful.
+It was a strange home-coming, with no one near to see.
+
+He spent the whole day at Lloseta engaged in the very practical work
+of employing men to labour at the garden and in the house.  It was,
+he said, his intention to come back to his "possession," as these
+Majorcan country houses are called, to inhabit it the larger part of
+the year, and to pass the remaining winter months at his palace in
+Palma.
+
+In the afternoon he mounted his horse, and in the evening, as has
+been said, he reached D'Erraha.
+
+A servant must have been watching his approach, for the large door
+was thrown open and he rode into the patio.  Fitz was here to
+welcome him; and behind him Eve, with Henry Cyprian in her arms.  No
+one spoke.  It was rather singular.  The Count dismounted.  He took
+off his hat and held it in the Spanish mode in his hand while he
+shook hands with Fitz and Eve.  He looked round the patio.  He noted
+the old marble well, yellow with stupendous age, the orange trees
+clustering over it, the palms and the banana trees, then he smiled
+at Eve.
+
+"After many years," he said.
+
+There was a little pause.
+
+"I should have wished to see your father," he said, "amidst these
+surroundings."
+
+Eve gave a little nod.  From long association with men she had
+learnt a manlike reticence.  She moved a little towards the open
+archway leading through to the terrace.
+
+"We have some tea," she said, "waiting for you.  Will you come to
+the terrace?"
+
+He followed her, while the servant led the tired horse away.
+
+They sat at the northern end of the terrace, where the garden-chairs
+always stood, and before, beneath, all around them rose and fell the
+finest of all the fine Majorcan scenery--scenery which only Sardinia
+can rival in Europe.
+
+Eve poured out his tea, which he drank, and set the cup aside.
+
+They all knew that the time had come for the Count de Lloseta to
+tell his story--to redeem the promise made to Eve and Fitz long ago,
+before they were married.
+
+Cipriani de Lloseta leant back in his deep garden-chair nursing one
+booted leg over the other.  He was dusty and travel-stained, but the
+natural hardiness of his frame seemed to be more apparent than ever
+in his native land, on his native mountains.
+
+"My poor little tale," he said; "you will have it?"
+
+"Yes," said Eve; and Fitz nodded.
+
+Cipriani de Lloseta did not look at them, but down into the
+gathering blue of the valley beneath them.  His quiet, patient eyes
+never turned elsewhere during his narrative, as if he were telling
+the story to the valley and the hills.
+
+"When I was quite a young man everything was too prosperous with me.
+I was rich, I had health and liberty and many friends; life was
+altogether too simple and easy for me.  Before I was twenty-one I
+met my dear Rosa and fell in love with her.  Here again it was too
+easy, too convenient.  Fate is cruellest when she is too kind.  The
+parents wished it.  The two families were equally old, equally rich;
+and lastly Rosa--Rosa was kind enough to be--kind to me."
+
+He paused, pensively rubbing his clean-shaven chin with his
+forefinger, his long profile was turned towards Eve, standing out
+like brown marble against the gloom of the valley.  Eve wondered
+about this woman, this Rosa, who had been forty years in her grave.
+She wondered what manner of woman this must have been to have kept
+the love of a man through all these years by a mere memory, but she
+did not wonder that Rosa had been kind.
+
+"She saw things in me that do not exist," Cipriani de Lloseta went
+on quietly.  "It is so with women when--and men may thank God that
+it is so."
+
+He gave a little laugh, unpleasant to the ear--the laugh of a man
+who has been right down to the bottom of life and comes up again
+with a sneer.
+
+Eve and Fitz made no sign.  This story was like wine that has lain
+forgotten in the dark for many years, it needed careful handling.
+Henry Cyprian turned on his silken cushion, and opening his great
+dark eyes watched the speaker with that infantine steadfastness of
+gaze which may perchance see more than we suspect.
+
+"We were married"--he paused and gave a jerk of the head towards
+Palma, behind him to the left--"in the cathedral, and were quite
+happy.  At that time the Harringtons were living, or rather staying,
+in this house with your good father.  Neither of you ever saw the
+Honourable George Harrington; your loss is infinitesimal.  For some
+reason they began to come to Lloseta a good deal--some reason of
+Mrs. Harrington's.  She was always a singular woman, with a reason
+for all that she did, which I, in my old-fashioned way, do not think
+good in a woman.  She disliked my wife.  I could see that through
+her affectionate ways.  I do not know why.  Men cannot understand
+these things.  Rosa was very beautiful."
+
+Eve, who was watching his face, gave a little nod--a mental nod, as
+it were, for her own edification.  It is possible that she, being a
+woman, understood.
+
+"Finally they came to stay a few days--you know the Spanish
+hospitality.  She forced it on us against our will.  I was
+particularly averse to it because of--Rosa.  I wanted to be quietly
+at Lloseta.  We intended to live almost entirely in Majorca.  We
+wanted our children to be Majorcans, and especially a son.  The
+Harringtons stayed longer than we invited them for.  They were well-
+bred adventurers.  I have met many such in English country houses--
+people who shoot, and fish, and hunt at the expense of others.  It
+suited them to stay at Lloseta, and they did so.  They were people
+who got the best of everything by asking for it--by looking upon it
+in a well-bred way as their right.  I did not mind that, but I
+wanted them to go, on account of Rosa.  Also I disliked the woman's
+manner towards myself; it altered when Rosa was not there, you
+understand.  We have a word for it in Spain, but I will not say it
+because the woman is dead."
+
+There was a rasping sound as he drew his first and second fingers
+across his closely shaven chin.  It is a singular thing that cynics
+usually reserve their keenest shafts for women.
+
+"At last I informed Rosa that they must be told to go, and Rosa was
+very angry.  It was her pride--the pride of a new-fledged hostess,
+of a young matron.  She was Spanish, and hot tempered.  My
+inhospitality was terrible to her, and she spoke sharply.  I was
+quicker to feel and to act then than I am now.  I answered her.  I
+would not give way, thinking, as I was, of the son we hoped for.  It
+was nothing, but we raised our voices.  In the heat of the argument
+I lifted my hand.  Rosa thought that I was going to strike her--a
+strange mistake.  She stepped back and fell.  You know our marble
+floors.  She struck her temple against the floor, and she lay quite
+still.  I heard a sound, and turning, saw Mrs. Harrington in the
+doorway.  She had been listening; she had seen everything.  Rosa
+never recovered consciousness; she died.  It was terribly easy for
+her to die.  It was equally hard for me to continue living.  Mrs.
+Harrington helped me in my great sorrow to a certain extent, but she
+would not help me by going away.  Then, as soon as Rosa was buried,
+she told me that unless I gave her money she would tell all Spain
+that I had murdered my wife.  At first I did not understand.  I did
+not know that God had created women such as this.  But she made her
+meaning quite clear.  Indeed to do this thoroughly, she hinted to
+the neighbours that she knew more than she had disclosed.  All
+Majorca would turn its back upon me--all except Challoner.  I paid
+the woman.  I have paid her ever since, and I do not regret it.
+What else could I do?  After many generations of honour and
+uprightness I could not let the name of Lloseta fall into the hands
+of a low woman such as Mrs. Harrington.  I had to pay heavily, but
+it was still cheap.  I saved the name.  No breath of dishonour has
+reached the name of De Lloseta de Mallorca.  I got her out of
+Majorca, and my old friend Challoner set himself the task of
+silencing the gossips.  But I found that I had to leave Lloseta--for
+the name's sake I quitted my home."
+
+He spread out his hands with a patient gesture of resignation.
+
+"Such has been my life," he went on.  "It has been spent in
+preserving the name unspotted, in paying Mrs. Harrington, and in
+praying the good God to make her life unhappy and short.  In His
+greater wisdom He prolonged her life, but it was never a happy one,
+for God is just.  I am the last of the Llosetas.  The name will die,
+but it has lived for six hundred years, and it dies as it lived--
+unspotted--one of the great names of the world."
+
+He broke off with a little laugh.
+
+"Spanish pride," he said.  "I must beg your indulgence.  My life you
+know.  It has not been a happy one.  I have never forgotten Rosa; I
+have never even tried.  I have had several objects however in life;
+it has not been uninteresting.  One of the chief of these objects
+has been to repay to a minute extent the true friendship of my dear
+Challoner.  He was a friend in need.  He taught me to look upon the
+English as the finest race of men on this planet.  I may be wrong,
+but I shall adhere to my opinion.  In my small way I attempted to
+repay in part to Challoner's daughter all that I owed to him; but I
+only ran against a pride as strong, as sensitive as my own.  My
+child, you did quite right!"
+
+He turned to Eve, smiling his patient smile.
+
+"And now," he went on, "I shall have my way after all."
+
+He laid his hand on Henry Cyprian, who was conscientiously putting
+the Valley of Repose to its best use.
+
+"After all, this little caballero was born at D'Erraha.  D'Erraha is
+his; is it not so?"
+
+And Eve, giving up her pride to him--casting it down before his
+loftier pride--came round to his chair, and bending over, kissed him
+silently.
+
+
+
+
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